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Cattle breeders and fruit growers well understand this principle. The 

 former will, in due time, give yftu an animal possessing any desirable 

 quality, and with the flesh or fat laid on in any specified part. They 

 will furnish you the small boned and tender muscled animal properly 

 inlaid with fat, so desirable for pork or beef ; or they will furnish, at your 

 bidding, the larger and more compact framed animal duly furnished with 

 stroncf and elastic fibred muscles, well calculated for service. The latter 

 will, almost without limit, change the qualities of his pears, peaches, 

 apples and apricots, giving them the shape, flavor and coloring prescribed. 

 So the agriculturist, upon the same principle, can change the qualities of 

 his crops, giving us wheat with an abundance of straw and paucity of 

 kernel, and these kernels covered with a thick, heavy cuticle, furnishing 

 abundance of bran and little flour, and this flour deficient in gluten, or 

 the pasty part of flour, so desirable in making bread and pastry ; or on 

 the other hand, by proper cultivation, he can give us wheat with an 

 abundance of kernel and comparatively small amount of straw, and these 

 kernels covered with a thin, transparent cuticle, furnishing but little bran 

 with an abundance of gluten. 



Again, it is found to be true of plants as well as of animals, that there 

 are, as physicians would say, pathological states, induced by agents to 

 which they (either the plant or the animal) are subjected. By a patho- 

 lo''ncal state or condition, is meant, some disordered or unhealthy state. 

 We find in the animal ecoilomy that there is oftentimes disease produced 

 by a superabundance of fluid, called dropsy. There are other conditions 

 where disease is produced by the want of certain elements in the blood, 

 or in the system generally ; such are chlorosis, rickets, softness and brit- 

 tleness of the bones. The only remedy in such cases, is to correct the 

 disproportion and restore the due equilibrium by proper remedies. Just 

 so, also, we may have diseased states of plants, either by a superabun- 

 dance of some of the elements furnished them by the soil, or by the 

 deficiency of other elements not furnished them by the soil, and the only 

 remedy in these cases is like that in the former cases of the animals, a 

 proper equilibrium must be restored. 



And now how is this to be done ? In the latter case just as in the 

 former. To the animal, the deficient material is administered directly as 

 a medicine or as food ; while the superabundant element is abstracted 

 either directly or by the mediation of medication. So in the plant, that 

 which is w^anting must be put within the reach of the suftering vegeta- 



