56 [Senate. 



Every body knows that active exercise will warm him in cold wea- 

 ther — that a horse driven forty miles a day will breathe oftener, 

 evolve more heat and consume more food, or fuel, than he will when 

 standing quietly in a warm stable. The waste oxygen and hydrogen 

 will escape from the lungs of the animal, if quiet, in the form of va- 

 por; in perspiration also, if driven hard. This sweat will carry with 

 it some nitrogen and saline matter, which sometimes crystalizes on 

 a horse by the evaporation to dryness of the liquid that escapes 

 through his skin. But most of the valuable salts taken from the 

 earth in the food of all animals, escapes by the kidneys and bowels. 



As the demand for carbon to form fat, muscle, cellular tissue, bone,, 

 brain, hair and wool, as well as to keep up a continuous heat of 98° 

 night and day, is very great, it will be seen why starch is so abundanty 

 not only in corn, as above indicated, but in all plants used as food for 

 man or beast. Starch contains a large amount of carbon. 



It is well known that if a bin of corn be moistened, it will heat 

 and grow or rot. In the process of sprouting, a seed first imbibes 

 some portion of the vital gas that surrounds it, which, uniting with 

 the carbon in the starch, forms carbonic acid and evolves heat. When 

 starch thus loses one portion of its carbon, it is changed into a kind 

 of sugar J making, as is well known, sweet bread from wheat a little 

 grown. If a grain of wheat be surrounded by a little waxy clay^ 

 only a half inch in diameter, it will not sprout, because oxygen gas 

 cannot penetrate the compact earth. By sowing grain in wet wea- 

 ther, so that the harrow covers the seed with mud, thousands of bush- 

 els are lost. 



It is a matter of great practical importance to know how to devel- 

 op a large, vigorous growth of roots. On a poor soil this can only 

 be done by the aid of science. Deep plowing and a thorough pul- 

 verising of the soil are indispensable to accomplish this object. 



If it cost the farmers of New-York twice as much land and labor 

 to produce a bushel of grain as it does their competitors out of the 

 State, how are the cultivators of the earth among us to prosper 1 



All the farmers in the Empire State should rise as one man, and in- 

 sist that the science of keeping property, shall be taught in all their 

 common schools. 



The same mental cultivation which will enable an honest tiller of 

 the soil to double the products, and double the value of his better di- 



