220 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



laws be about theft and adultery and idolatry, or about gravitation 

 and nutrition and fertilization ; and they require neither detective 

 police, nor judge, nor jury, nor sheriff"; they execute themselves — 

 nobodj' dodges one of them. The man is to be pitied who confounds 

 His laws with statute enactments manufactured by legislatures. 



It is our duty, and our privilege to repent, to try to make good 

 the evil of our misdeeds in the past, and thus to leave our lands 

 to our children better, and not worse, than we found them. And 

 this brings me to the consideration of a very important point in 

 the use of commercial fertilizers, and one which is too often over- 

 looked, which is this : We all know that crutches are used with 

 various intent. By the hopelessly lame they are used for tem- 

 porary relief only ; but by those not incurably crippled, they are 

 used witli the purpose of getting well, — they are used in a way 

 calculated to accomplish the end in view, in such a way as may 

 enable to lay by strength, so as, by-and-b}^ to do without artificial 

 helps. 



Such sliould be our intent also. Our lands are not hopelessly 

 crippled. If we can but add manure enough for a limited term, to 

 enable us to get good crops, and then use those cro2')S in a ivay tvhich 

 shall enable us to return to the land the means of future fertilization 

 which they are capable of yielding, then we may retain and sustain 

 the degree of fertility which we obtained by temporary artificial 

 aids. 



AVe hear it often said, that special manures tend to exhaust land. 

 1 tell you manures never exhaust land. It is the crops, which the 

 manures enable jon to take from the soil, which exhaust it. If we 

 sell these off' from the farm, returning nothing in their place, the 

 land is, sure enough, in a fair way to run down ; and the more it 

 produces, after this fashion, the faster it will run down. But if 

 we will deal honestly Avith it, first converting the crops into meat 

 and milk and wool, and manure, and then save the manure and 

 ap)p)hj it, thus returning a fair proportion of what we have taken 

 from the soil, we may have, for our own use, or to sell, all wliich 

 has been contributed to the crops from the atmosphere and from 

 the dews and rains of heaven, and besides this, a portion also of 

 the ash constituents of the plants grown, these being annually 

 liberated from the hidden, dormant resources of the soil, through 

 the agencies of nature and of cultivation. And this will suffice to 

 support us handsomely, and such practice can be kept up), with in- 

 creasing fertility, as long as the world stands. 



