WHEAT CULTURE. 29 



and skillfully." Our fields are exhausted and can only be restored 

 by proper appliances to the soil by returning to it the elements 

 abstracted by the crop removed from it. This can only be done 

 by a liberal application of manures in some form. What that form 

 is must be ascertained by skill and experience. With barn-yard 

 manure in sufficient quantities the farmer would feel confident that 

 persistent and continued application, even by "main force," 

 would secure good crops, as well as rich and fertile fields. But 

 this is often unattainable. For the want of barn-yard manure, 

 artificial or commercial manures are necessarily resorted to. Here 

 is an unexplored field for the untaught farmer. Science has yet 

 much to impart on this point. For wheat, the free use of lime, 

 ashes, plaster, superphosphates, &c., are highly recommended. 

 These are all, doubtless, beneficial, but with varied results on dif- 

 ferent soils. The adaptation of either of these, or a combination of 

 all or a part to any given soil, can only be determined by experimen- 

 tal application. A thoi'ough knowledge of the constituents of the 

 soil would enable the farmer to apply, intelligently, any or all of 

 these as the case might require. But our farmers are not able to 

 determine the wants of their soils ; and when the farmer applies 

 lime where vegetable mould is wanting, he fails to understand 

 why it has not the same effect as in its presence, and so of other 

 ingredients that are only beneficial in the presence of still other 

 lacking constituents. Actual experiments alone will enable the 

 farmer to apply skillfully and successfully. ' As a possible excep- 

 tion to this rule, I have been interested in the preface to a course 

 of lectures by Prof. Ville of the Museum of Natural History in 

 Paris. Prof. Ville, it is said, " commencing with barren sand and 

 a flower-pot, added to that barren sand certain constituents neces- 

 sary in agriculture, — for instance, phosphate of lime, potash, 

 nitrogenous substances, and lime. He found that when one con- 

 stituent was added, certain plants would grow in it, while others 

 refused. Two of these constituents being added, a still larger 

 number of plants would grow ; and when, in short, all the neces- 

 sary constituents were added in their proper proportions, a full, 

 and abundant crop, was obtained." 



"To operate with greater certainty. Prof, Ville removed every 

 element of error or doubt from his experiments, and proceeded by 

 the synthetic method. He took calcined sand for his soil, and 

 common flower-pots for his field. Ten years of assiduous obser- 

 vation and experiment led him to recognize that the aliment 



