34 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



If any of these elementary materials be wanting nature cannot 

 construct a plant an}" uK^re than a builder from brick alone can erect 

 his substantial structure ; he must have the mortar to cement it. So 

 a plant refuses absolutely to grow if even onlv one of these ele- 

 mentary materials is not within its reach. For instance, there 

 is but an atom of lime in a plant of corn, yet if that atom of lime 

 be not within the reach of the roots of the plant, that plant never 

 can be made to grow ; all the sunshine that may be thrown upon it, 

 all the rain that may be showered down upon it cannot produce a 

 corn plant without that little atom of lime. It is so with all the 

 other twelve elements ; if any are wanting the plant refuses to grow. 



Practice has proved that our New England soils have a sufficiency 

 of all these elementarv materials with the exception of one or more 

 of these three : nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash. The supplying 

 of the necessary elements of fertility' to the soil becomes, then, a 

 more simple affair than it would be if we had to supply the whole. 

 The farmer, having an infertile soil, need look out for only one or 

 more or these three materials : nitrog(jn, phosphoric acid and potash. 

 These are frequently, in our unproductive soil, all three wanting ; 

 sometimes only one is wanting, but if my previous statement is cor- 

 rect, you see that is equally fatal. 



Nature takes these materials from the soil and atmosphere and 

 builds the plant ; so you see at once that these very elementary 

 materials which we call fertilizing materials, when we apply them 

 to the soil, are the ver}- identical substances that are found in the 

 plant; the very identical substances that go to make up the structure 

 of the plant. The plant, during its growth, has taken them from 

 the soil, or from the atmosphere. These materials that I am speaking 

 of, nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash, come to the plant through 

 the soil. The atmospheric portions it is not necessary to allude to, 

 because the farmer has not to look out for them at all. Our farm 

 crops, then, take up out of the soil nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and 

 potash, and we find the same stored in the plant. 



You will see at once something of the relation of the plant to the 

 fertility of the soil. I want to enforce the point, that if these crops 

 are sold off in their raw state, from the farm, everj^ mite of the 

 material that they have taken from the soil goes with them, and you 

 arc exhausting the soil to that extent. If these raw products in the 

 whole are sold from the farm awa^' goes with them just that fertiliz- 

 ing material which is so necessary- to the production of another crop. 



