The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

From the Providence Gazette.

To the Editor of the Providence Gazette.

By inserting the following, from the British Annual Register, you will oblige the cultivators of Barley in this State, as well as your constant reader,

A Friend to Agriculture.

On the use of steeping Seed Barley in a dry Season--By Mr. James Chapple; addressed to the Secretary of the Bath Society.

SIR,

The following experiment having occasioned me great success, I make no apology for communicating an account of it to you, for the benefit of the public, if thought worthy of a place in the third volume of the Bath Society's experimental papers.

The last spring being remarkably dry, I soaked my seed barley in the black water taken from a reservoir which constantly receives the draining of my dung heap and stables. As the light corn floated on the top, I skimmed it off, and let the rest stand twenty-four hours. On taking it from the water, I mixed the seed-grain with a sufficient quantity of sifted wood ashes, to make it spread regularly, and sowed three fields with it. I began sowing the 16th, and finished the 23d of April.

The produce was sixty bushels per acre of good clean barley, without any small or green corn, or weeds at harvest. No person in the country had better grain.

I sowed also several other fields with the same seed, dry and without any preparation; but the crop, like those of my neighbours, was very poor; not more than twenty bushels per acre, and much mixed with green corn and weeds when harvested.--I also sowed some of the seed dry, on one ridge, in each of my former fields; but the produce was very poor in comparison of the other parts of the field.

I am, &c.

JAMES CHAPPLE.

[We consider this experiment as a very interesting one, and recommend general trials to be made, both in wet and dry spring seasons, as well of barley as other summer grains.]