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der your granaries, if it could be done with impunity. Impunity is the rule, 

 not decency, and honesty. If you wait till all mankind have manners, and 

 delicacy, and honor, you will cease to strive to fill your pocket books and 

 granaries, as well as to rear orchards. 



If a f:.rm is worth earning, and subduing, and adorning, and occupying 

 permanently, it is worth nursing and preserving. Perpetual improvement 

 instead of perpetual exhaustion of the soil should be the rule of every good 

 farmer. 



The most fatal practical error committed by the fanners of our State, is 

 that of exhausting without repairing the soil. Our population should be 

 more deeply impressed as to the folly of recklessly pressing the soil to ex- 

 haustion. A majority of our farmers have ploughed, and sowed, and reaped, 

 till their fields now afford a lessened crop. The same process continued, and 

 they will soon afford no crop at all. We observe no proper alternation of 

 crops. We squander and waste great quantities of vegetable and anima^ 

 matter which ought to be restored to fertilize and fatten our lands. How 

 suicidal our present course is, is shown by a few considerations. 



The soil is composed of organic and inorganic substances. The organic, 

 comprises animal and vegetable matter ; the inorganic, minerals, matter never 

 quickened by the principle of life. The inorganic matter entering into the 

 construction of either animal or vegetable life, is quite insignificant. After 

 burning, the ash that is left shows what is inorganic. The trunk of a tree 

 does not afford two per cent, of ash : wheat straw not seven per cent., and 

 tlie wheat itself not two per cent. The vegetable, eaten and digested, enters 

 into the composition of the animal : the animal, when mingled with dust, 

 becomes food for vegetable life. Life blooms, thrives, and decays, to become 

 again the renovating principle of new forms of beauty and life. Thus ani- 

 mal and vegetable life is perpetuated. The bones strewed upon the battle 

 fields of Waterloo and Austerlitz become manure for the crops of Belgium 

 and Austria. Horse and rider mingled in indistinguishable dust, become 

 food for the worm or the plant. The material carcass is worth most which 

 weighs most. » 



"Imperial Caesar dead and turned to clay. 

 May stop a hole to keep the wind away." 



It becomes us to recognize always this ever ruling and vital truth. Nothing 

 of an animal or vegetable nature, no bone, no offal, no dead animal, no de- 

 caying vegetables should be thrown into the running stream, or into the 

 public highway, or burned, or in any way wasted. In the village in which 

 I reside are several families who habitually throw offal, bones, and ashes, all 

 vital manures, into the streets, at more trouble than it would take to place 

 them on their gardens. Could the cabbages speak, they would be taught 

 better. A few days ago, in passing over the Michigan Southern Railroad, I 

 saw the carcass of a dead animal thrown into the woods, a nauseous and 

 offensive object to every passer by, while within a few feet was a fallow field, 

 in which it might have been buried and many rods of ground saved from ex- 

 haustion for years. During the same week, travelling by another conveyance, 



