A Contribution to Agricultural Botany

Abstract

THE author of the small volume before us is already favourably known as an investigator of more than one obscure yet important problem connected with field-botany. The text of his present discourse is “turnip-singling,” He approaches this subject in a characteristically careful manner, taking into account, as he does, a number of considerations which might easily escape the attention of an ordinary observer or experimenter. The object and manner of his experiments present no novelty; indeed, it seems to us that Mr. Wilson can hardly be fully aware of the immense number of trials which have been made, both in this country and on the Continent, in order to ascertain the best distance apart for swedes and turnips. However, experiments of this order certainly require frequent repetition in order that the influence of season, climate, soil, and manure, may be duly measured. Any one of these conditions may so affect the result as to invalidate a hasty conclusion drawn from one or two years' trials, even when such trials have been conducted, not in one locality, but in several. Mr. Wilson is quite right in saying that “the theory of no farm plant has been worked out,” and that “our turnip shows are conducted on no useful principle.” But he is not equally correct in affirming that “the chemist of the Aberdeenshire Agricultural Association initiated a most important mode of teaching one aspect of cultivation,” or that questions in agricultural botany “have usually been altogether subordinated to questions on the comparative efficacy of manures. Had Mr. Wilson known the range of work and style of teaching until lately prevailing at Cirencester, and for long and now in vogue in many agricultural colleges in America and on the Continent, he would have hesitated before making such statements.”

A Contribution to Agricultural Botany.

By A. S. Wilson. (Aberdeen: J. Rae Smith, 1879.)