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tlie pi'oducts of a constant transference of matter from one condition 

 to another. The matter that was a short time ago the leaves of the 

 primitive forest, combined with some of the pulverized rock of the soil, 

 and with some of the gases of the air and water, becomes corn ; it is 

 soon changed into the flesh of an animal, it nourishes a man, it passes 

 again into the air or the earth — not a piarticle is lost — and now it is 

 ready to be changed again into grass or grain, or any other article of 

 food for man or beast. 



Thus you see that on an extended scale, cultivation can never impov- 

 erish a country. Nay, cultivation enriches a country ; for by tbe pro- 

 cess of growth, new mineral matter is disintegrated from the rock, and 

 the soil is slowly but surely deepened, and it is not improbable that the 

 amount of carbon in the shape of carbonic acid is continually increas- 

 ing. 



But the greatest shame of the nation, as an agricultural people, is 

 that vegetable food once carried to the market, is considered as lost and 

 destroyed, and never is sought again after it has accomplished its tem- 

 porary purjDOse of nourishing man and beast, to fertilize the soil and 

 pass again into growth and beauty and wealth. We read of farmers in 

 Michigan selling from one hundred to thousands of bushels of wheat, 

 and many tons of hay and other products, and we read of locomotives 

 drawing long trains of cars carrying thousands of tons of solid nutri- 

 ment towards the great cities for home consumption and the foreign 

 market ; but we never read of those cars bringing back anything in re- 

 tui*n for the land. The farmers receive their money — but gold and sil- 

 ver and bank notes, though often called dirt, are not often used for ma- 

 nure. Does it need anything more than a very little common sense, 

 and a knowledge of the second process of school arithmetic, to know 

 that sooner or later such a system must impoverish a country ? If you 

 have a million dollars to live upon, and continually subtract from it 

 and add nothing to it, sooner or later it must be consumed. The pro- 

 ductiveness in our soil is a finite quality — it can be exhausted, and that 

 too, veiy soon. The rich soil of this country can soon be deprived of 

 one or more of its essential elements. There are thousands of acres 

 even within the limits of the United States, that have been over-work- 

 ed till they are temporarily destroyed. What is necessary on a large 

 scale is the careful preservation of all organic matter, the whole country 



