No. 105.] 47 



the proper ingredients for building up these living beings ; and how 

 combine each ingredient in due proportions'? It is plain that no 

 man can create one particle of matter which Nature may require to 

 form one potato. So far, then, as the supply of raw material shall 

 be deficient, or unavailable, the crop, whatever it may be, will be 

 deficient also. The lack of any one necessary ingredient, is not only 

 fatal to all increase of the product, but an excess of any one of the 

 many substances needed, will be likely to prove equally destructive 

 of vegetable life. The truth of this remark will be sufficiently obvi- 

 ous when it is stated that nearly all cultivated plants contain, as 

 essential constituents, a little soda and chlorine, or common salt. 

 But an excess of common salt is alike fatal to all plants and animals. 

 Nearly all plants contain both sulphur and iron. But an excess of 

 copperas (sulphate of iron) is fatal to all living things. 



To obtain large crops at a small expense, one must have, not only 

 all the things that enter into the organic structure of the plant, but 

 these things in due proportion. Nor is this all that is required. You 

 may have, in contact with the roots of a potato, corn, or wheat 

 plant, just the mineral substance — silica, or flint sand for instance — 

 which it most needs, and if it be quite insoluble in water, it will be 

 utterly useless ; for no solid, earthy substance can enter the minute 

 pores of root.s. The hard, flinty covering on reeds, corn-stalks and 

 wheat straw, is composed essentially of the same minerals that form a 

 flint tumbler. But the latter, if broken fine, would be a poor fertilizer, 

 because pounded glass is quite insoluble. Many a farmer loses half 

 his labor, and half of his crops, because he feeds them on indigesti- 

 ble and unavailable food. 



Nothing interested me more than to witness the zeal and earnest- 

 ness with which many good tillers of the earth are studying the best 

 method of collecting, preserving and using the food of plants. Ma- 

 nure has long been regarded as the farmer's mine of wealth. Still, we 

 all have much to learn on this important subject. In my lectures, I 

 have endeavored to discuss it in the most common language, and 

 intelligible manner possible. The aim has been to present the use- 

 ful and the practical^ rather than the theoretical and the beautiful in 

 the science of rural economy. The following may be taken as a 

 sample of the manner in which the subject of fertilizers has been 

 treated. 



