WHEAT CULTURE. 33 



" It restores to the soil all of those mineral and saline elements 

 that its growing plants had absorbed or drawn from the soil, 

 to wit : alumina, lime, magnesia, potash, soda, sulphur, oxide 

 of iron, &c., for growing plants absorb or suck up from the 

 soil, through the spongioles or numerous little mouths of 

 their roots, these and other substances that are essential or 

 useful to their growth, and retain them in their stems and leaves." 



" It also restores to the soil all other fertilizing substances that 

 its growing plants had absorbed or derived from the atmosphere. 

 We thus in plowing down the whole of a green manurial crop, not 

 only restore to the soil all that its growing crop had received from 

 the soil, but at the same time, also, what it had received from the 

 air ; and so we must of necessity, make the soil better or richer 

 than it was before, since we really add to it more fertilizing matter 

 than the plowed-down vegetation had taken from it." 



"Green manure ferments and decays very rapidly,* (especially 

 if its mass be heavy and dense,) in consequence of its soft and 

 and sappy nature, and this produces an immediately beneficial 

 effect upon the very first crop of grain, grass, and the like grown 

 upon it or its decaying roots, stems and leaves." 



" It makes the stems of wheat, rye, oats and other cereal plants, 

 grow up stronger and stiflFer, and bear larger and heavier kernels 

 or grains, than animal manures alone." 



" It makes the soil loose and mellow, because the vegetable 

 matter so plowed down becomes, through the future action of the 

 plow, harrow, and cultivator, so intermixed with the hard particles 

 of earth as to render them softer, and gradually to crumble down 

 into a dark-colored and porovis loamy soil." 



"It makes the soil warmer, because its fertilizing vegetable 

 matter acquires and evolves heat while undergoing the process oT 

 fermentation and decay." 



Prof. Johnston of England, says : "In no other form can the 

 same crop convey to the soil an equal amount of enriching matter, 

 as in that of green leaves and stems. When the first object, 

 therefore, in the farmer's practice is so to use his crops as to 

 enrich his land, he will soonest effect it by plowing them under 

 in the green state." 



A writer in the Rural New Yorker thus relates the practice of 



* Sometimes, when a very heavy and juicy crop is turned under in hot weather, in- 

 jurious effects have been observed ; perhaps due to the fermentation being too rapid or 

 going too far. — (s. l. g.) 



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