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it analyzed. It was destitute of this ingredient. He applied bone manure, 

 and raised twenty-five bushels of wheat where none would grow before. A 

 soil may be almost clear vegetable deposit, yet if destitute of silica, there 

 will not be consistence and strength in the stalks, insignificent as that ingre- 

 dient seems. In cotton wool, but one per cent, is ash, and silica is but one 

 twenty-fifth of that one per cent., yet it is a necessary ingredient. It enters 

 more largely into the stalks of the plant, however. An analysis of Indian 

 corn, (the whole plant, loaves, cobs and corn,) shows that it contains starch, 

 gluten, oil, albumen, casein, dextrine, sugar, water, silica, lime magnesia, 

 potash, soda, chlorine, sulphuric acid, carbonic acid, alkaline, and earthy 

 phosphates. Every time you throw away a shovel full of organic matter, you 

 throw away some of these elements — some elements of the corn crop. I think 

 I liear some one inquire — "what of all that? we cannot analyze our soils.'' 

 That is true, but I can tell you Avhat you can do. You can restore all vegeta- 

 ble and animal matter to the soil. You can stop much of the exhaustion. 

 Once knowing the great law by which life and growth is perpetuated, you 

 can obey and not defy it. In those countries of Europe where population 

 presses close upon the means of subsistence, the systematic preservation of 

 manures of all kinds, is carried to an extent to us almost incredible. As a 

 result, some crops have been doubled ; and although their lands have been 

 tilled for centuries, and although an ignorant boor, a mere piece of animated 

 machinery, may work with clumsy and miserable tools, yet crops are obtained 

 twice or three times as large as we obtain from the most fertile virgin soils of 

 the west. In this branch of agriculture we are far behind older and more 

 densely populated countries. The m.ost obtuse observer must have noticed 

 that this country has made rapid advancement in many respects during the last 

 five years. The improvement is marked in the wide introduction of sheep, 

 and of improved varieties. Labor is diminished by the use of improved agri- 

 cultural implements. More care is taken in regard to breeds of stock, and 

 kinds of seed. Yet these advantages are partially neutralized and lost, by the 

 reckless ne j;lect and exhaustion of the soil, which I have attempted to describe. 

 Anothe' rule of action, no less important, which should be perpetually 

 borne in mind by the fanner, is a determination to plant no seed and propagate 

 no fruit except that which is tested, pure, sound and prolific : rear no breeds 

 of swine, sheep, cattle or horses, but such as are healthy, symmetrical, kind, 

 docile, easily nurtured and sustained ; and use no ploughs, drills, cultivators, 

 shovels or other implements except those by which the greatest amount of 

 execution can be effected with the least physical exertion, and least waste of 

 man and beast. The profit or loss from the observance or neglect of this rule 

 of action is constant, perpetual, immense. Here is a man who has some infe- 

 rior, foul wheat, which he proposes to use for seed. With a little cost and 

 time, not so much cost as the cost of his tobacco for six mouths, and not so 

 much time as he might fool away at the tavern in a week, he could procure a 

 pure, mature, clean, healthy article of seed. Suppose with his good seed he 

 should raise eight hundred bushels of pure and sound and merchantable 

 "wheat, and with the foul seed should raise ten per cent, leas of foul and in- 



