Another artificial guano, containing 26 per cent. of water and 60 per cent. of lime and sand, &c., and not 1 per cent. of ammonia, is sold at 70s., while it is not worth carrying a mile if it could be had for nothing. Other manures still occasionally find purchasers, though absolutely worthless, or even mischievous. Oil-cakes of various kinds, as well as fertilizers, pass through Dr. Voelcker's hands, and faulty samples, under analysis, lose the character under which they have been bought and sold: and the publication by the Royal Agricultural Society of these investigations by their chemist must ultimately prove serviceable.

A very instructive discussion by Mr. Lawes on the waste of food during respiration has been published with a view to the elucidation of sound farm practice in the meat manufacture. It is obvious, as he points out, that in the case of animals fed for the butcher the economy of the feeding process will be the greater, the less the amount of food expended by respiration in the production of a given amount of increase; and it is equally obvious that one ready and efficient means of lessening the proportion of the waste or expenditure to the increase produced, is to lessen as far as possible the time taken to produce it; in other words, to fatten as quickly as possible. From numerous experiments made at Rothamsted it appears that a pig weighing 100 lbs. will, if supplied with as much barleymeal as he will eat, consume 500 lbs. of it, and double his weightthat is, increase from 100 lbs. to 200 lbs. live weight-in seventeen weeks. Of the 420 lbs. of dry substance which the 500 lbs. of barley-meal contain, about seventy-four are stored up in the 100 lbs. of increase in live weight, about seventy are recovered in the manure, and 276, or nearly two-thirds of the whole, are given off into the atmosphere by respiration and perspiration-that is to say, are expended in the mere sustenance of the living meat-making machine, during the seventeen weeks required to produce the 100 lbs. of increase.

Mr. Lawes points out that if instead of allowing the pig to have as much barley-meal as he will eat, the 500 lbs. of meal had been made to last many more weeks, the result would have been that the animal would have appropriated a correspondingly larger proportion of the food for the purposes of respiration and perspiration, and a correspondingly less proportion in the production of increase. In other words, if the 500 lbs. of barley-meal were distributed over a longer period of time, it would give less increase in live weight, and a larger proportion of it would be employed in the mere maintenance of the life of the animal. Indeed, if the period of consumption of the 500 lbs. of meal be sufficiently extended, the result will be that no increase whatever will be produced, and that the whole of the food, excepting the portion obtained as manure, will be expended in the mere maintenance of the life of the animal.

The conclusion is obvious, that, provided the fattening animal can assimilate the food, a given amount of increase will be obtained with a smaller expenditure of constituents by respiration, the shorter the time taken to produce it. In fact, by early maturity, and the rapid fattening of stock, a vast saving of food is effected.

Mr. Lawes has lately made a practical use of the conclusions to which his Rothamsted researches have led him in connection with another branch of farm practice. In a paper read before the London Farmers' Club on the exhaustion of the soil in relation to landlords' covenants and the valuation of unexhausted improvements in favour of an outgoing tenant, he drew a distinction between the natural fertility of a soil, which is the property of the landowner, and the "condition" of the soil, which is often properly the property of a tenant. The following are the practical results which he considers follow upon his discussion of this subject:

"Condition" is a quality distinct from natural fertility of soil, and is mainly dependent on the amount of capital expended by the tenant in the purchase of cattle food or manures. It is, therefore, his property, and may be easily and rapidly reduced. -The natural fertility of a soil, on the other hand, whether high or low in degree, is, comparatively speaking, a permanent quality; it can only be injuriously affected by the continuance of an exhaustive system of cropping for a long period of time; it is the property of the landlord; and, excepting in the case of very light soils, it is the chief element in determining the rent-value of the land. No injury is likely to result to the landlord in the case of the heavier soils from granting the tenant permission to crop as he pleases, provided he be bound to keep the land free from weeds, and to leave a fixed proportion under fallow and green crops at the termination of his occupation.-By the valuation of so much of the farmyard manure, and of so much of the manure constituents derived from purchased cattle food, as have not yet yielded a crop, and also of the straw of the last harvest, fair compensation may be made to the outgoing tenant.-If abundant capital is to be attracted to the soil, it is essential that liberal covenants in regard to cropping should be adopted, and fair compensation for unexhausted improvements made.

Among the remaining principal events which have lately happened in the agricultural world must be named the remarkable favour with which the so-called ABC process for dealing with the town sewage nuisance has been received by many towns on which the adoption of it has been urged. Chemical analysis does not endorse the extravagant assertions which have been made regarding the merits of the process. The water is still foul after sewage has been acted on by the A B C mixture; and the dried mud which it throws down, for which 70s. a ton is the price demanded, is not worth, even

theoretically, one half that sum; while, practically, it must be pronounced of very little value indeed. The valuation of 1 or 2 per cent. of "combined nitrogen" in the midst of a mass of clay and other inert mineral matters cannot be conducted on the same scale as is applicable to the ammonia of a manure in which it forms or of the total weight. And in addition to the lower theoretical value of "combined nitrogen" in this diluted form, it is practically so much the less valuable on account of being loaded with a lot of worthless stuff, the expense of applying which to the land has to be deducted from any result of the application which may be due to the small quantity of fertilizing matters with which it may be charged. Nothing connected with this or any other scheme for sewage utilization has at all shaken the conclusion, to which the Rivers Pollution Commissioners had been led by their investigations, that sewage irrigation is not only the best method of sewage defecation, but the only known plan by which its filth may be profitably converted into fertility.

2. ARCHÆOLOGY (PRE-HISTORIC).

'FLINT CHIPS' is the title of a book just issued by the Trustees of the Blackmore Museum, Salisbury, written and compiled by Mr. Edward T. Stevens,* their honorary curator. Few private gentlemen have merited the thanks of men of science more justly than Mr. William Blackmore, by whose munificence the town of Salisbury has been enriched with the excellent Museum of Prehistoric Archæology described in the clearly-written and well-printed pages of the book before us.

Mr. Stevens's work has been written with a view to illustrate the Stone age by the help of the collections in the Blackmore Museum; but he has really done far more than this, for we learn from these pages the history of "Wampum"-that very useful article in whatever part of the world we may be cast-of the earliest known evidence of the use of tobacco as evidenced by the "Mound City" explorations; of the cultivation of maize and other cereals; of the early evidence of the manufacture and the use of pottery; of weaving, spinning, &c., as practised by aborigines; of ornaments in gold, silver, and bronze; of weapons of war and the chase, and how they were used; of the animals found with primitive man; of the houses he dwelt in above-ground, above-water, and underground; and, lastly, of his burying-places and religious rites for the dead.

These and a hundred other topics Mr. Stevens has brought *Flint Chips: a Guide to Pre-historic Archæology. By E. T. Stevens. London. 8vo, pp. 632. Bell and Daldy. 1870. 2 D

VOL. VII.

together in a useful form in his book, all that he says having a reference to the collections in the Blackmore Museum, yet giving sufficiently clear information upon each subject to interest the general reader who may never be able to visit this most interesting place.

The arrangement of the Blackmore Museum consists mainly of four great groups:-1. The remains of animals found associated with the works of man. 2. Implements of stone. 3. Implements of bronze. 4. Implements, weapons, and ornaments of modern savages, which serve to throw light upon the use of similar objects belonging to pre-historic times.

The mammalian remains are described by Dr. H. P. Blackmore. These consist chiefly of a local series from Fisherton, near Salisbury, associated with stone implements of the palæolithic type. "The animals," says Dr. Blackmore, "which lived in our country whilst the drift-beds were being deposited, differed strangely from those with which we are now familiar, and afford the most conclusive evidence of the greatly altered condition of our climate. The musksheep, reindeer, lemmings, pouched marmot, mammoth, and woolly rhinoceros are all animals peculiarly adapted for living in an Arctic clime. Our downs were tenanted by vast droves of rather small but hardy horses, not unlike the half-wild forest ponies of the present day, by large herds of deer, and shaggy-maned bisons. The stillness of the night, we may imagine, was not unfrequently broken by the terror-inspiring roar of a hungry lion, or perchance by the howling of a pack of wolves, or the hideous discord of the savage hyænas quarrelling over some half-putrid carcase-making the air re-echo with their peculiar yells."

There is good reason to believe that the Blackmore Museum, although not so extensive in every department as some of the Continental museums, is nevertheless one of the best in Europe.

But what adds perhaps the greatest value to the Collection, and what, for purposes of comparison, places it above all others, is the suite of American antiquities obtained by Messrs. Squier and Davis in their explorations of the tumuli and mounds of the valleys of the Mississippi and Ohio. This was the finest collection of its kind in the United States, and it is doubtful whether one of equal extent, and so rich in the works of primitive man, can again be made in America; indeed many of the specimens are unique. Apart from the general merit of the Blackmore Museum as illustrating pre-historic archæology in a singularly successful manner, the fact of its containing this remarkable American collection gives it at once a distinctive character, and offers a special object to reward the archeologist who may visit this ancient city-already famous for its magnificent megalithic remains at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, once the home of the bustard, the last of our large indigenous wild birds exterminated by man.

Part X. of Reliquiæ Aquitanica has come to hand since our last Chronicle was written. M. Lartet commences in this number a very admirable article on the employment of sewingneedles in ancient times, illustrated by a plate and numerous woodcuts of bone and bronze needles.

The bone needles from the caves have nearly all rounded stems, and in most cases they have been carefully polished. Narrow pieces of the hard exterior of the bone or horn were carefully isolated by parallel cuts with a flint flake, and when quite detached the splinter was rubbed into proper shape on a sandstone rubber, and polished on a skin. The eye of the needle was drilled with a pointed flint drill. Some needles figured exceed three inches in length, and, in finish, are as slender as a German-wool-work needle or large darning-needle of the present day. It is very interesting to find in the same cave with the finished needles, the half-made needles (partially cut from the horns of reindeer, the bones of a bird, the metatarsal of the reindeer, and the metacarpal of the horse) and the "wasters," also the instruments used for their manufacture, showing that the cave-folk of the reindeer period were as well accustomed to make and use the needle in the preparation of articles of dress as are the modern Esquimaux. It is also (as M. Lartet observes) but reasonable to suppose that, like the Esquimaux, they used the sinews of the reindeer for their thread, as there is equal justness in inferring that their dress was composed of the skin of these animals so abundant throughout the region of Aquitania in pre-historic times. M. Lartet thinks the long needles may have been used for embroidery, as they would have been too delicate to use for ordinary sewing or stitching of skins, for which the short stout needles seem best adapted.

An interesting account is given of the preparation of the skins by the Esquimaux, and their methods of sewing and ornamenting their dresses.

The cave-folk of the Reindeer period were quite unacquainted with the sheep, and although, like some modern aborigines, they had a prejudice against the hare and rabbit, yet they seem to have killed them for the sake of their fur, to use, it is supposed, as the Laplanders do, to trim the borders of their dresses with.

Before concluding this account, it is interesting to note that the eyed needles were not found indifferently in all the stations of that period. At Les Eyzies, Laugerie Basse, and at La Madelaine in Dordogne, the largest quantity of needles have been collected and always associated with harpoon-heads of the barbed type. It is also

*

'Reliquiæ Aquitanica: being contributions to the Archæology and Palæontology of Périgord and the adjoining provinces of Southern, France.' By Edouard Lartet and Henry Christy. Edited by T. Rupert Jones, F.G.S. London. H. Baillière.