THE Dublin Society having expresd a wish, (with their offer of a premium or the cultivation of spring wheat in Irend,) for any information, that could be obained on that important subject, of so much ublic interest, I beg leave to transmit to hem, through you, the result of some expements, which I have made upon it in three ears of successive practice.

I believe I was one of the first persons Ireland, that ventured on the experiment sowing wheat in spring. The practice is ill new with us, and I am very much istaken if it be well understood in Great ritain, though I know it has been followed there

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there for years, especially on the borders of Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire. The universally received opinion of there being more husk and bran in spring wheat than in that, which is sown in autumn, I am inclined to think is untrue altogether. It is positively contradicted by every experiment that I have made of it; and if it has any foundation, 'tis that the kind of wheat, usually called spring wheat, is of an inferior quality, and may have given rise to an opinion, for which I can trace no other grounds..

Having so disposed of one of the most weighty objections, that I have heard offered to the sowing of wheat in spring, I proceed to state the further result of my own experience on this subject, and I shall take the liberty of forwarding with my report samples of the grain, on which I have formed my opinion, with the best explanation I can give of the quantity and quality of the produce, and of every circumstance connected with it.

By some accident, (I believe the extent, of my other works,) I was prevented in the year 1802 from an early preparation of my wheat fallow. The ground was not ploughed to my liking, when the frost set in, and I ordered it in consequence to-be ploughed again

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and again, and to be sown in the earliest part of the spring with the seed, which I had procured for sowing in November, and which was the common red Lammas of a

good quality. The seed was sown in March, and produced a fine crop of wheat, perhaps a week later ripe than it might have been, had it been sown in autumn, but certainly not more. In the exposed situation, in which I live, the crops of wheat on our high lands, being open to the storms from the Atlantic, often fail, as the people here say, from the shoots being broken by the violence of the winds. It became therefore an object with me to follow up the experiment of sowing wheat, after those storms were over. I therefore directed another spring sowing in the spring of 1804 from the produce of this last crop, and I never saw a finer field of wheat. For a further investigation of the subject, in November 1804, I limed a hill, which was considered a fair soil for wheat, and I sowed about ten acres of it, in the month of November, with seed from the wheat, which had been sown in the preceding spring; and about one acre of the same soil, in the same field, I sowed also in November, with seed sold to me as spring wheat. The produce of both was very good, any difference fully to be accounted for by a difference

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a difference in the situation and the soil. The best of this spring wheat, sowed in winter, being threshed, produced twentynine pounds of wheat, which being ground produced twenty-three pounds of flour and six of bran. See samples marked l ́and 1.

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Following up the same line of trials, some choice ground of mine was well ploughed. During the last winter it contained ten acres, and it was sown partly with my own former seed, and in part with one sack of the same spring wheat that had been sown in November; the grain put in the ground between the twentieth of February and the first of March. The crop was by far the most abundant I ever saw, and differed little in its quality; it was reaped between the sixth and the thirteenth of September as it became ripe, and was about one week later cut than that, which had been sown in the preceding November. One bart of it threshed produced twenty-nine pounds of wheat, which, when ground, produced twenty-seven pounds and a half of flour, and two pounds and a half of bran; not half the quantity of bran, which another bart of the same weight of wheat had produced, when sown in winter.

Having procured some seed of the wheat, called Jerusalem wheat, about one acre of the same field was at the same time, about the end of February, sown with it. The

crop

crop exceeded any thing ever seen in these
parts; the straw longer; the grain far heavier
and more abundant; and, what is particu-·
larly worthy of observation, not one car of
it, though the whole was scorched through,
could be found that had received blight,
though the other wheat, sown in ridges on
both sides of the Jerusalem wheat, had been
blighted most materially, and part of every
ridge, save the Jerusalem wheat, was smutty.
The bart of Jerusalem wheat, when threshed,
weighed forty-one pounds, of which thirty-
eight was flour, and three pounds only of
bran. Samples marked 3, 3-Having pro--
cured from Mr. Crips, who travelled through
Egypt with Dr. Clarke, some grains of the
wheat grown in Upper and in Lower Egypt,:
I sowed them in my garden, one kind of
which was bearded, and appeared to me to
be the same kind of grain as that called
Jerusalem wheat, and the other not bearded;
I had not enough for a sufficient experi-
ment, but both were free from, smut, and
very fine grain. See samples marked 4 and
5.-They were sown in the last spring, and
I have just now sown an acre of it, to see
whether it may be still better by cultivating
as a winter grain.

To conclude, I am of opinion that the sowing of wheat in spring is less subject

to

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