214 ANDROSCOGGIN SOCIETY. 



Manures arc of two kinds, tlie fossil or mineral, and putres- 

 cent. They have three forms, the solid, liquid and gaseous. 



As all the vegetable kingdom takes its food by absorption 

 through the nutritive organs of their leaves and roots, it must 

 all be reduced to the two last forms. The food of plants is* 

 prepared for their reception by the action of the acids and 

 alkalies on solids. They produce on animal and vegetable mat- 

 ter fermentation and putrifaction, the product of which is geine 

 or hmnKS. 



The principal food of plants in its prepared state, is hydro- 

 gen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen, with their different combina- 

 tions, these being differently combined, form a vast number of 

 compounds. 



The union of oxygen and hydrogen form water ; nitrogen and 

 oxygen, air ; hydrogen and nitrogen, ammonia ; carbon and oxy- 

 gen form carbonic acid. These are four important articles for 

 the food of plants. There are several others, but I have not 

 space to name them. 



Now the business of the farmer, so far as his agency goes, is 

 to prepare this food and set it before this family of vegetables^ 

 and place it within their reach, so they can help themselves. 

 But the farmer says, this is a hungry family; I have not enough 

 for them to eat. Now I would inquire the reason. Is it not 

 because you have allowed their food to go to waste ? Your 

 farms produced abundantly when first cleared, and there has 

 not been one particle of fertilizing matter annihilated. The 

 question then is, what has become of it? 



I have not space to answer this question now but may at 

 some future time. 



Calvin Mower, Chairma?i. 



John Stevens^ Statement. Heap composed of green brakes, 

 old potato tops, muck and leaves from swamp, sods from 

 broken up pasture ground, such as will not rot but leave the 

 field in bad shape unless taken olT. I prepare a grate on which 

 I make my heap; near this I dig a vat four feet deep and ten 

 feet square, in which I prepare my lye, composed of saturated 

 water — quicklime, about two bushels ; ashes, four bushels ; soot, 

 one bushel; salt, four bushels; plaster, four bushels. In mak- 



