before us. The Rev. Mr. Swayne, inftigated as it should feem by the surprise excited by the foregoing account of the produce of lucerne, felected part of a field which naturally abounded with the bufh-vetch (the Vecia Sepium of Linnæus); which having been cut four times in the year (1785), yielded at the rate of 24 tons 11 C. weight per acre, a full third more than the lucerne. And as this plant is not near fo fucculent as lucerne, he concludes it would afford a yet greater proportion of dried provender.

Mr. Swayne fuppofes that this plant has been hitherto unnoticed by the farmer; but in this particular he is mistaken; for this very plant, among many other indigenous plants, was ftrongly recommended for the very qualities Mr. S. takes notice of, in the Effays relating to agriculture and rural affairs by James Anderson, publifhed in the year 1777. From fome obfervations we ourfelves have made on the culture of this plant, we have reafon to think the deftruction of the feeds by the infect he met with in such abundance is not fo univerfal as he feems to imagine.

BUCK WHEAT.

Buck wheat, as a crop, is but little known in Britain; but from the experiments of Mr. Bartley of Briftol, it would feem to merit the attention of the farmer, efpecially on dry fandy foils, as it thrives abundantly in the drieft season, and admits of being fown any time from the middle of May to the middle of July. He has applied it to the feeding of hogs, poultry, and horfes, which are speedily fattened by it; and he thinks it would probably be useful in the diftillery.

PLANTING AND TRANSPLANTING WHEAT,

The planting of wheat (that is the dibbling the feeds) is feveral times mentioned in this volume, in terms of approbation, by particular members, but the practice does not feem to gain ground.

Mr. Bogle of Daldowin, near Glasgow, in Scotland, is very earneft in recommending the practice of transplanting wheat; we have to regret that the Society could not in this volume publish

the authentic accounts of feveral experiments that were made at his inftance, and which were attended with very great fuccefs. The advantages he apprehends which would refult from this practice he states as under:

ift, A very great proportion of the feed will be faved, as a farmer may have a nursery, or fmall patch of plants, from which his fields may be fupplied; he calculates that one acre will afford fufficient plants for one hundred acres.

zd, That a great increase of crops may be obtained by this method, probably a double crop, nay perhaps a triple quantity of what is reaped either by drilling, or the broadcaft husbandry.' This feems much exaggerated.

i

3d, That a great part of the labour may be performed by infirm men and women, and alfo by children, who are at prefent supported by the parish charity; and that of course the poor's rates may be confiderably reduced.

4th, That the expence will not exceed from 20 to 30 fhillings per acre (N. B. This far exceeds the value of feed diminished), if the work be performed by able bodied men and women; but that it will be much lower, if that proportion of the work, which may be done by employing young boys and girls, fhould be allotted to them,

5th, That in general he found the distance of nine inches every way a very proper diftance for fetting out the plants at; but recommends them to be tried at other spaces, fuch as 6, 8, or even 12 inches.

6th, That he conceives an earlier crop may be obtained in this manner, than can be obtained by any other mode of cultivation.' This feems highly improbable.

7th, That a clean crop may alfo be procured in this way; because, if the land be ploughed immediately before the plants are fet out, the corn will spring much quicker from the plants than the weeds will do from their feeds, and the corn will thereby bear down the weight of the weeds.' Probable.

8th, That fuch lands as are overflowed in the winter and spring, and are of course unfit for fowing with wheat in the autumn, may be rendered fit for crops of wheat, by planting them in the fpring, or even fummer.

9th, That he has known inftances of wheat being transplanted in September, October, November, February, March, April, and even as late as 'the middle of May, which have all anfwered very well.'

He adds fome other confiderations that he thinks fhould recommend this practice, which for brevity we muft omit; but we beg leave to fuggeft one other confideration in favour of the practice, which seems to have escaped Mr. Bogle, though, in our opinion, it will be of more general importance than all the others put together. It has been long a defideratum in agriculture, to obtain a crop of wheat after turnips. Nothing puts the foil into a better ftate for producing wheat, than a good crop of turnips; but unfortunately these can fcarce ever be taken off the ground in time for fowing wheat at the proper season; fo that farmers are obliged either to forego their crop of wheat, if they muft have turnips, or the crop of turnips if they must have wheat. It is obvious, however, that fhould the mode of culture, recommended by Mr. Bogle, be found on a fair trial to fucceed perfectly well, both thefe crops could be obtained from the fame field with the greatest facility. A fyftem that feems to be probably calculated to introduce into general practice fuch a capital improvement, certainly merits the unprejudiced attention of the farmer.

We

We meet with several pertinent obfervations on the dairy in this volume, and on the proper method of making butter and cheese, which though in fome refpects defective, will fill be of ufe to those whofe practice is not fo good as that recommended. Little new occurs on the fubject of manures. Some new ma

chines are here defcribed, which are rather complex in their ftructure; and, what is worse, fome of them not explained; fo that the Society affume the office of advertising in favour of quacks, rather than for the diffemination of knowledge. But our limits do not permit us to enlarge on these heads.

Our

Dr. Fothergill here publishes a few remarks on the benefit that might refult from the application of chemiftry to agriculture and rural economy. We are forry that our countrymen in general seem to be fo backward in the ftudy of this useful fcience, fo neceflary for the improvement of every art. neighbours on the continent have got greatly the ftart of us in this refpect, which muft, in a short time, give them a decided fuperiority over us in many arts and manufactures, if we continue in the fame liftlefs indifference as to this particular. We heartily with it may be obviated.

Several other ingenious effays on speculative fubje&s occur, which we cannot afford room to particularize. For the fame reafon we muft not expatiate on the very fatisfactory experiments made by Sir John Anftruther on the growth of wheat and barley, which could not be eafily abridged. But we cannot help again taking notice of the impropriety of filling upwards of eighty pages of the prefent volume with an account of a variety of medical experiments, very much detailed, undertaken with a view to ascertain the qualities of British rhubarb. These experiments might with propriety have appeared in a collection of medical memoirs; but in a work profeffedly intended for farmers they furely fhould not have obtained a place. All that could have been wanted would have, been the general opinion of the many refpectable phyficians who have confidered this subject, which would have been a fufficient authority to the farmer for cultivating the plant.

The prefent volume of the Bath Society Papers deferves, however, the attention of the Public; and we hope, that by a more careful felection of papers in future, the fucceeding volumes (one of which is faid to be in fome forward nefs) will be ftill more perfect than the paft.

ART. III. Mr. Jones's Treatife on Mufic concluded: See laft Month's Review.

W

E now proceed to our Author's feventh chapter; in which he treats of harmonic Periods, diatonic and chromatic.

The

The title of this chapter is very inviting and fertile; and the Examples of Pl. 13. are in general well felected, and useful, though worn out, and all of one fpecies of Mulic. The book of modulation juft mentioned tells us what may be done, occafionally; but the four plates between p. 34 and 35 fhew us, what has been done fo often, that it is now become almost unpardonable to do it again and of thefe, Ex. LXXIV. is not a good specimen of double counterpoint, in which the bafs may become the treble, or the treble the bafs; for by this inverfion of the parts, the ligatures are all falfe.

The Author's inftructions for Canon and Fugue are very fhort and flight, though it is a fpecies of compofition for which he feems to have all due reverence.

In the bottom line of Pl. 16, bar 5, there are two fifths between the bafs and 2d treble; and Ex. LXXXI. bar penultima, another errors which compofers of the Old School are not prone to pardon.

At the end of LXXXVI. the Author has condefcended to give us a touch of modern vanity: an ad libitum: an accelerando; a volata-however, for fear of excommunication from the old Apollo temple in Tottenham Court, the end is right orthodox, and the preparation for the shake, as antique and folemn, as if it were the production of Tye, or Tallis himself.

P. 37. The Author, fpeaking of the Chromatic fyftem, fays, 'I have a conjecture of my own, which must take its chance; viz. that it was fo called, because the notation in the Mufic of this fcale was of a different colour from the diatonic notes, as it was once a custom with our own Muficians to make their notes black, or red, to denote a difference of time and measure.' But he is perfectly fafe from blame, if this conjecture fhould be thought too bold to hazard without the leaft authority; for the idea was previously started by Rouffeau, in his Dictionaire de Muf. Art. CHROMATIQUE, where he tell us that the word comes from Xpua, colour, either because the Greeks wrote the Mufic of this genus in red notes, or characters of different colours; or, as fome fay, because Chromatic is the mean betwixt the two other genera, as colour is the mean betwixt black and white; or, according to a third opinion, becaufe this genus embellishes the diatonic by its femitones, which have the fame effect in Mufic, as colours in painting.

On this genus, or, as our Author calls it, fyftem, he has be Rowed much pains, and tells us, Introd. p. vi. that he flatters himself, the Reader will find the Chromatic fyftem more clearly explained and better confirmed than in any other work on Mufic.'

After this declaration, we expected new rules, new paffages, and new principles-the paffages however are common, as in

fimple

fimple counterpoint they ever muft be. The examples indeed are numerous, and moft of them to the purpofe; yet some are crude, and pushed too far. In Ex. XCIV. for inftance, the C natural with the G natural in the 2d bar, is, we believe, unexampled in any fuch paffage to be found in the works of a good compofer. Ex. XCVII. there is fomething embarraffed and abrupt in the 5th bar. And in Ex. XCVIII. the chromatic fucceffion is carried too far for our ears, though the Author claims a merit for not going further. B has a perfect chord and 7th given to it in the beginning of the 2d bar. And he feems to have little right to be farcaftical on modern Masters for transgreffing the proper bounds of modulation, who seems to have done all he could to out-do them. Whether B is used at the beginning or end of the period, is of little confequence, if it gives falfe harmony, for the reafons he affigns. But we have a right to furnish B with a true 5th from the laws of the 2d Tetrachord of a minor key: fee Plate 21. and therefore Rameau is juftified; and who ever wrote a chromatic fugue in A minor, without modulating into E, its 5th, by means of the fundamental bafs B? See Corelli's Sonatas, and Handel's Org. Fugues.

*

The Author, by calling his examples periods, made us hope that they were phrafed and fymmetric, as to measure; but we find them often fo broken and irregular in this refpect, as to amount to little more than fragments of phrafes.

If our Author, with fuch purity of tafte, and reverence for ancient fimplicity, can ftretch his ears, with any tolerable ease, to fuch a chromatic tenfion as Ex. CI. and CII. require, he may bid defiance to all the femitonic riots of your Clementis, Guefts, and Cramers, on the piano-forte: it is only in melody that they fo wantonly play with chromatic; but in thefe examples, harmony and fundamentals are in queftion; the foni ftabiles, the pillars of the ftate, muft be refpected, with whatever frippery ornaments bad taste may load them. But, in the way of parenthesis, we will venture to say that there never was a cadence, an ad libitum, a volata on a tafto folo, or pedale bafs, worth hearing, that would not have admitted of a bafs, if it had been written down, though good tafte perhaps required that it should be performed without.

Whatever modern Masters may have made ufe of the F* in the first bar of Ex. CI. and CIII. they can have ears only fit for Daniel De Foe's roftrum. In Ex. CII. to make the period fupportable, it feems as if the A* in the bass should be Bb. The key, in all these three examples, is equivocal; and except by the omiffion of flats and fharps at the clef, which implies the key of Cor A natural, there are no means of afcertaining whether thefe paffages belong to A major, A minor, or D minor. Indeed, confidering their harshness, and little ufe as models, they

hardly