Elements of agricultural chemistry and geology

TO WHICH ARE ADDED, SUGGESTIONS FOR EXPERIMENTS IN PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE.

BY JAS. F. W. JOHNSTON, M.A., F.R.SS. L. & E.

Fellow of the Geological Society, Honorary Member of the Royal Agricultural Society, &c. &c.; Reader in Chemistry and Mineralogy in the University of Durham, &c.

These Lectures will be divided into four Parts, of which the First is now ready; the others are in course of publication, and the whole will be completed in two volumes.

OUTLINE OF PART I.—“_On the Organic Constituents of Plants._”—Lecture I. Elementary substances of which plants subsist. II. and III. Compound substances which minister to the growth of plants. IV. Sources from which plants immediately derive their elementary constituents. V. How the food enters into the circulation of plants—general structure of plants. VI. Into what substances the food is changed in the interior of plants—substances of which plants chiefly consist. VII. Chemical changes by which the substances of which plants chiefly consist are formed from those on which they live. VIII. How the supply of food for plants is kept up in the general vegetation of the globe.

OUTLINE OF PART II.—“_On the Inorganic Constituents of Plants—the Origin, Classification, and Chemical Constitution of Soils—General and Special Relations of Geology to Agriculture—Origin, Constitution, Analyses, and Methods of Improving Soils in different Districts and under unlike conditions._—Lecture IX. Kind and proportion of inorganic matter contained in plants. X. Properties of the inorganic compounds which exist in vegetable substances, or which promote their growth. XI. Of the nature, origin, and classification of soils—Structure of the earth’s crust—Classification and general characters of the stratified rocks—Agricultural capabilities of the soils derived from them. XII. Granite and trap rocks, and the soils derived from them—Superficial accumulations. XIII. On the exact chemical constitution, the analysis, and the physical properties of soils.

PART III.—Methods of improving the soil by mechanical and by chemical means—Manures, their nature, composition, and mode of action—theory of their application in different localities.

PART IV.—The results of vegetation—the nature, constitution, and nutritive properties of different kinds of produce, and by different modes of cultivation—the feeding of cattle, the making of cheese, &c. &c. The constitution and differences of various kinds of wood, and the circumstances which favour their growth.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

“A valuable and interesting course of lectures.”—_Quarterly Review._

“But it is unnecessary to make large extracts from a book which we hope and trust will soon be in the hands of nearly all our readers. Considering it as unquestionably the most important contribution that has recently been made to popular science, and as destined to exert an extensively beneficial influence in this country, we shall not fail to notice the forthcoming portions as soon as they appear from the press.”—_Silliman’s American Journal of Science. Notice of Part I of the American reprint._

“We think it no compliment to Professor Johnston to say, that among our own writers of the present day who have recently been endeavouring to improve our agriculture by the aid of science, there is probably no other who has been more eminently successful, or whose efforts have been more highly appreciated.”—_County Herald._

“Prof. Johnston is one who has himself done so much already for English agriculture, that to behold him still in hot pursuit of the inquiry into what can be done, supplies of itself a stimulus to further exertion on the part of others.”—_Berwick Warder._

ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY AND GEOLOGY.