128 [Senate 



priately his study, and if he can hammer any thing' out of it for our 

 benefit we will cheerfully pay him for his labor. Must we all turn 

 chemists, to analyze the soil and the component parts of its products, 

 so that knowing what we want to produce, we can know exactly what 

 ingredient to apply to produce it 1 This would be a pleasant pastime 

 for the farmer, and if he could carry it out would materially lessen 

 his labor. Must we all turn botanists, and give to each plant its or- 

 der, genus and species in the great vegetable garden of nature 1 Oh, 

 no. Let the man of leisure do this — it is a pleasant study, and it 

 opens to his mind the vast and comprehensive knowledge and good- 

 ness of the Almighty, in providing not only for the sustenance of his 

 creatures, but also what is to relieve them in sickness, and add to their 

 multiplied enjoyments in health. Let the farmer attend to these pur- 

 suits if he pleases, for pastime and recreation ; it will add to the store 

 of his ideas, and open new subjects for contemplation ; but they are 

 not indispensable to the proper management of his farm, although oc- 

 casionally he may draw contingently upon them. We know that if 

 we wish to produce plants, we ought to provide food for them. The 

 more abundant that food to a certain extent, the more the plant is de- 

 veloped. We know that decomposed vegetable matter, in all its va- 

 riety, is the natural food of plants, and that if we shall make our farms 

 productive it must be by ah abundant supply of manures. By the 

 term manure I do not mean simply the accumulation of our barn-yards. 

 This constitutes an item, an important item in our supply ; but I mean 

 all that stimulates the plant, either quickly or slowly, but permanently 

 to its full development. In this way, and in this way only, has an 

 exhausted soil been recovered, and yielded to its generous owner a 

 fourfold return. 



Do not be afraid therefore, to lay out time and money in drawing 

 marl upon your land, filling your yards with leaves, muck, weeds or 

 offal. Your swamps are a treasure to you ; you may first mow their 

 surface, and make an abundance of litter from their weeds, and next 

 take the black vegetable mold which has been thrown out of your 

 ditches, to fill your yard or make the compost heap. Two loads of 

 muck will go as far as one load of stable manure — and all its cost is 

 the drawing — whilst there is at the same time profit in the removal. 

 Then there is a clover ley— there is lime, gypsum, ashes of wood, 

 leached and unleached, and for meadows the ashes of coal. There is 

 poudrette, horns and guano. New experiments, with new substan- 

 ces, are constantly tried, and I have no doubt in a few years the list 

 will be greatly extended. But we have already enough for present 

 use ; our only difficulty is we are too sparing in the application. Do 

 you doubt the goodness and wisdom of Providence, and that after giv- 

 ing you all these materials He did not mean you should use them 1 

 Have you ever applied one dollar's worth of manure that you did not 

 receive two dollars in return 1 I can assure you that if it has been 

 w-ithheld from you, it has not from me ; for I can spt^ak from expe- 

 rience of the bountiful manner in which those are rewarded who re- 

 plenish the land, and make it fruitful. 



Depend upon it, the great defect of our farming is the scanty return 



