PLANT NUTRITION. 41 



accepted views and opinions of farmers in relation to farming are 

 concerned ; for if this be true, it is no longer needful to keep a 

 single animal to make barn-yard manure to keep up the fertility 

 of the farm. We have all felt that we could not sell our crops off 

 the farm, — that the man who sells his hay and corn is selling his 

 farm, and will pretty soon have only the subsoil left. That has 

 been our theory and we have all believed it, but if half that I have 

 been telling you is true you don't need to keep this stock. If 

 with a few pounds of materials you can grow crops anywhere and 

 keep up the fertih'ty of the farm to any point you choose, you 

 need not keep cattle on your farm /or thai purpose. 



Now I want to meet an objection right here. " Why," says the 

 farmer, "do you mean to say that we don't want any barn-yard 

 manure on the farm ? Do you mean to say that barn-yard manure 

 isn't good for anything." Not a bit of it. I never said anything 

 of the kind. Barn-yard manure must still be king. I only said 

 that it wasn't necessary to keep cattle for the express purpose of 

 keeping up the fertility of the farm, and to make crops. In ordi- 

 nary culture we are obliged to have animals on the farm, — for the 

 dairy, and for beef. We are obliged to keep animals on the farm, 

 and the farmer must be a consummate fool who would let the 

 waste product of these animals run to waste. You need all the 

 barn-yard manure you can get. Utilize it and save it in every 

 available way. Save all the waste of your fisheries, the waste of 

 the different kinds of^your manufactories, save all your waste of 

 every kind and from every source, and apply it to your field in 

 the best way that science can teach, and after you have done all 

 this there is a vast waste to be made fertile that you can never 

 make fertile by barn-yard manure, and the waste products that 

 you have worked up from every nook and corner of the land. 



One point more. If one-half that has been said is true, then we 

 can make the old hills of New England, these worn-out plains, 

 and these fields that are becoming depopulated by the removal of 

 our sons, we can make them bud and blossom as the rose. We can 

 cover them with the grandest, most luxuriant, and most profitable 

 crops. We can make ourselves richer ; we can make the whole 

 country richer ; and we can enjoy here privileges of which the 

 emigrant to the West must be deprived. Stay at home, boys, on 

 the hills of New England. If I were a young man, with the light 

 that we all possess, I would make my home somewhere in the 

 Atlantic States. You can make more money here, and you can 



