68 [Senate 



long in grass. Ashes, silicate of potash, &c. would increase the quan- 

 tity of grass on this soil. No. 2 shows the composition of a soil in 

 Moravia, celebrated for yielding large crops of grain for a long peri- 

 od without manure. It has been cropped 160 years successively, 

 without either manure or naked fallow. No. 3 is the analysis of a 

 virgin soil from the banks of the Ohio. R has of course all the ele- 

 ments of fertility. No. 4 is an analysis of a soil given by Spren- 

 gel as an instance of those having natural sources of fertility, and 

 therefore capable of producing good crops with applications of ma- 

 nure at distant intervals. This soil is defective in the mineral salts, 

 such as the potash and soda, the phosphoric and sulphuric acids, and 

 the chlorine, yet lying as it does on the side of a hill containing lime- 

 stone and marl, the waters percolating through or over these, and 

 afterwards spreading over the field, supply it annually with an amount 

 sufficient for a good crop. Instances in the central parts of this state 

 may be pointed out, where similar causes produce the same result ; 

 a kind of natural manuring of the most valuable kind. 



Chemical analysis, however, as applied to agriculture, must be 

 considered as scarcely to have entered upon its office, when confined 

 to the classification of soils, or determining the nature of their con- 

 stituents. This was indeed once considered about all that could be 

 necessary, and to this the attention of the early chemists was princi- 

 pally directed. With the progress of the science, and the extension 

 of inquiry, however, it was deemed proper not only to submit the 

 soils themselves to analyses, but the produce of the soils. To detect 

 and determine the gaseous matters entering into vegetation was not a 

 difficult task, but more skill was required to determine the earthy 

 materials that go to form plants, and of course must be taken from 

 the soil in which they are grown. The importance of results so ob- 

 tained, can be perceived at once ; for they furnished the means, taken 

 in connection with an analysis of the soil, of determining the wants of 

 plants, and what was required to supply them. In this investigation, 

 the ashes of plants have furnished the basis of analysis. When the 

 plants are dried and burned, the ashes are found not only to contain 

 the mineral or earthy matters of the plant, but these materials are 

 found, in different plants, to differ in their proportions very material- 

 ly. This will in a great degree serve to show why some plants will 

 succeed well, where others could scarcely exist, or would perhaps 

 prove a total failure. In order not only to show what the earthy 



