SECRETARY'S REPORT. Y9 



lacks, we add to its growth, and the application is a profitable one 5 

 if we add such as the crop did not require, or such as existed already 

 in sufficient quantity in the soil, no effect is produced, and however 

 useful it might have been on other soils, its application here was not 

 profitable. Another theory formerly received with favor, but now 

 discarded, is that of De Candolle and his followers, who supposed 

 that the roots of plants excrete certain substances similar to the 

 excretions of animals,- and that these excrements were injurious to a 

 succeeding crop of the same kind, but harmless and even fertilizing 

 to some others, and so, when a field after repeated crops of wheat 

 refused longer to yield the same, but would produce a fair crop of 

 something else, the fact was explained by this "excretion theory" 

 in an apparently simple and intelligible manner, and when it was 

 found that wheat would again grow after a bare fallow, it was ex- 

 plained by saying that the poisonous excrements of former crops had in 

 the meantime become decomposed and converted into food for a new 

 crop of wheat. Plausible as this theory at first appears, and popular 

 as it once was, it is now universally discarded by the best authorities 

 as without foundation in fact, and of course utterly valueless. 



The one most generally received at the present day, is what is 

 known as the "mineral theory," which, although it does not satis- 

 factorily and fully account for all the known results of rotation, some 

 of which suggest the idea that collateral circumstances, independent 

 of the inorganic constituents of the soil, may exert a hitherto unob- 



its mineral constituents ? Certainly not tlie soil alone, for that prjcluced but four 

 or five liundred pounds before; not the muscle bed alone, for if it did, the second 

 application would have given another eight or ten tons; but both together — the 

 muscle bed supplied the deficiencies of the soil, and by its means, very soon every 

 thing in the soil which Nature's processes could convert into hay was drawn forth 

 and carried off. 



If the manure yielded by the three tons cut the first year had been returned, and 

 the same repeated each succeeding year, instead of ever failing, the productiveness 

 of the land would doubtless have been fully maintained, and even steadily increased. 



Now which in reality was the more blame-worthy of the two — the muscle bed for 

 doing all the good it could, by bringing the land into a condition to yield three tons 

 per acre, and which yield could have been, by making proper returns, maintained 

 forever, or the farmer, who, not content with this, nor willing to deal honestly with 

 his land, eo used, or abused, its assistance as to utterly exhaust it f Such wisdom 

 is equalled only by his who killed the goose which laid the golden egg, instead of 

 properly caring for it and allowing it a reasonable amount of food. 



