Horse-hoeing husbandry : $b or, an essay on the principles of vegetation and tillage. Designed to introduce a new method of culture; whereby the produce of land will be increased, and the usual expence lessened. Together with accurate descriptions and cuts of the instruments employed in it.Tull, Jethro
Science
Horse-hoeing husbandry : $b or, an essay on the principles of vegetation and tillage. Designed to introduce a new method of culture; whereby the produce of land will be increased, and the usual expence lessened. Together with accurate descriptions and cuts of the instruments employed in it.
Tull, Jethro
Agriculture -- Early works to 1800; Plows; Tillage
There are, doubtless, more than a Million of Sorts of Plants, all of
which would have taken up the Water, and had each as much Right to its
Share, or proper Matter in it, as the Doctor’s Plants had; and then
there would be but a very small (or a Millionth) Part of it proper to
each of his Plants: And these leaving all the rest behind, both of the
Water wherewith the Glasses at first were filled, when the Plants were
put into them; and also of all the additional Water daily supply’d into
them afterwards; I say, so much more terrestrial Matter brought into
these Glasses, in Proportion to the added Water, and so very small
a Part as could be proper to each of his plants being carried off;
there must have remain’d in these Glasses a much greater Quantity of
terrestrial Matter at the End of the Experiment, than remained in the
Glasses _F_ or _G_, which had no Plants in them, nor any Water added
to, or diminished from them; but the quite contrary appear’d. ‘And
the Water in the Glasses _F_ and _G_, at the End of the Experiment,
exhibited a larger Quantity of terrestrial Matter, than any of those
that had Plants in them did. The Sediment at the Bottom of the Glasses
was greater, and the _Nubeculæ_ diffused thro’ the Body of the Water
thicker.’ Had the _Cataputia_ insum’d, with the Two thousand Five
hundred and One Grains of Water, no more than its proper Share of the
vegetable Matter, it could not have attained thence an Increase of
Three Grains and a Quarter, nor even the Thousandth Part of One Grain.
But he found ‘this terrestrial Matter, contained in all Water, to be of
Two Kinds: The one properly, a vegetable Matter, but consisting of very
different Particles; some of which are proper for the Nourishment of
some kind of Plants, others for different Sorts,’ _&c._
This, indeed, would have been a most wonderful Discovery, and might
have given us a great Light, if he had told us in what Language and
Character these proper Differences were stamp’d or written upon the
vegetable Particles; which Particles themselves, he says, were scarce
visible. Certainly it must be a great Art (much beyond that of Dr.
_Wallis_) to decypher the Language of Plants, from invisible Characters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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