252 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



an American science of agriculture until you have tliat 

 work going forward, painstaking, cai-efullj^, persistently, year 

 after year. And we never shall learn how to manage our land 

 by experiments under the foggy, damp, cold climate of Eng- 

 land ; but we must learn our facts in our bright, hot sunshine, 

 the soil as it is, and the air as it is all around us. And we 

 shall never be thoroughly and completely grounded where 

 we ought to be, until we have a corps of men somewhere at 

 work upon this all-important subject. 



Now, then, I say (pardon me for this digression), that 

 we have no soil in America that can be continually cropped, 

 without at the same time being reduced in fertility, — grow- 

 ing poorer and poorer. And yet the water of the soil does 

 not carry away appreciably any of the elements of fertility 

 which are stored therein. Then, plants growing naturally on 

 the soil enrich it. Plants growing on the soil by artificial 

 culture always deplete it. We never can harvest crops from 

 the land, and carry them away, unless, by some method or 

 some scheme, we can contrive to develop out of the soil, 

 by the aid of natural law, the materials we carry away, or 

 else make direct application to the soil, in manurial form, of 

 the materials we have removed. 



But again: what is the influence of water in the process? 

 Much, every way. And this shall close my remarks, gentle- 

 men. Think you that the soil of Utah is sterile ? We talk 

 about "the Great American Desert." Think you that that 

 soil is sterile? Is the soil of Colorado sterile? Why, no. 

 It is stored, to use a common expression, "chock-full" of the 

 proper elements for the growth of plants, in a soluble condi- 

 tion and ready to be used ; and yet those lands produce no 

 crops. Why ? Because they have not the water ; that is all. 

 Water applied to those soils has produced the results with 

 which we are perfectly familiar, developing the most marvel- 

 lous fertility ; nothing but water. Water in Colorado, on a 

 piece of apparently barren soil, will give you thirty or forty 

 bushels of wheat to the acre, and do it year after year for 

 quite a number of years. Water in Utah, on those barren 

 soils, apparently sterile, will give you most bountiful crops 

 of all those vegetables that you put on the land. Now, 

 then, what water can do in Utah, what water can do in Colo- 

 rado, in a certain sense water can do in Massachusetts. 



