132 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



it is a point which is largely or almost entirely overlooked. 

 It is the use and value of muck as a soluble, if I may so 

 term it — as an element or agent applied to soils to increase 

 the amount of plant-food by combination with and action 

 upon elements already present in the soil, but not in a condi- 

 tion for use. All soils are rich to a less or greater extent in 

 plant-food which is in an insoluble condition, locked up as it 

 were and not available. For instance, most soils contaia 

 nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acids in insoluble forms, 

 and all these are valuable and effectual fertilizers, but they 

 require something to put them in a condition for plant-food. 

 Now therefore anything that will render these substances or 

 a portion of them soluble, or capable of being taken up by 

 plants will produce the same result so far as producing crops 

 by the soil is concerned, as though manures or fertilizers Avere 

 npjjlied directly. 



i»fature's alchemy yearly changes and renders available for 

 plaiit-food portions of these stores of potash, nitrogen and 

 phosphoric acid locked up in the soil, by means principally of 

 the action of water and carbonic acid gas on the rocks and 

 minenils. Hence the necessity of a supply of carbonic acid 

 gas, the principal source of which in the soil is decaying 

 vegetable matter, and herein is the value of muck made 

 apparent. Our old, long time cropped fields are deficient 

 in organic matter, which has been appropriated by plants and 

 perhaps hauled to market, and being thus deficient but little 

 •cai-hmuc acid is generated, therefore but a small amount of 

 the food elements of the soil can be made soluble or capable 

 of being assimilated by plant growth. 



Now that need must be supplied or the crop returns will 

 be meagre, and just here, we contend, comes in the most 

 important use of muck — to increase the amount of organic 

 matter in the soil, thereby producing a suppl}^ of carbonic 

 acid which by contact renders the inorganic materials soluble. 

 Supposing even that muck of itself will not pay the cost of 

 handling, yet if by its use a portion of the insoluble plant- 



