PLANT COMPLEXION.
What may be called the science of complexion, of which the botanists and biologists of Rothamsted are making a special study, is developing very rapidly. A pretty illustration was given this week at the Royal Lancashire show by the associated farmers. You can tell the state of health and special needs of a whole field as well as of a particular plant by the general colour. In this illustration prevailing red indicated the summit of acidity (there is no political symbolism in the fact !). Yellowness indicated little lime ; greenness sufficient lime, and blueness great richness in lime. Of course, farmers have always judged their fields more or less by colour. When we see a meadow quite beautiful with red sorrel we have known that it NAT= " sour " and that the cure for sourness was lime, but the colour tests of a more definite and accurate sort are now being worked out successfully ; this should greatly help the amateur in search of rule-of-thumb instructions in the elements of culture.
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