22 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



you call it muck, or peat, or barn-yard manure, or compost. 

 I say he measures everything by the quantity, the pile, the 

 cord, or the load, and to him it is incomprehensible, it is 

 humbug, to say that smaller quantities, in a different and in a 

 better condition, can produce equal quantities of crops as a 

 large mass of crude, unformed, unfitted material ; and yet the 

 same farmer complains, and is in a constant storm, because 

 his business is a business above all other industries surrounded 

 by douljt, and uncertain in relation to results. ^He will tell 

 you that, obeying the injunction of Scripture, he "sows by 

 all waters," but he cannot tell whether his crops will prosper, 

 or whether they will prove all alike good ; that the results are 

 uncertain ; that he knows not what his income may be ; that 

 he has done his duty ; and he implies, although he does not 

 say it, that he leaves the result with God. But, he says, after 

 all, it depends entirely on the weather whether he shall have 

 a crop or whether he shall not. No man can tell, he says, 

 when he manures his land, when he ploughs it, and when he 

 prepares it for the seed, whether he is to have a crop or not. 

 It depends upon the weather ; one season gives him abun- 

 dant crops, another season gives a deficiency of crops. And 

 when he says this, he does not allude, nor do I, to those 

 exceptional seasons when we have a frost in July, or when 

 we have those severe droughts, when the earth itself is fairly 

 burned up, or when we have frosts which destroy all our 

 crops in an immature condition. He simply refers to those 

 variations of the seasons which do not allow the growth and 

 perfection of maximum crops on the farm. 



Now, right here, I want to ask and answer this question, 

 as applicable to this subject of feeding plants, or of plant- 

 nutrition : What have the ordinary variations of our seasons 

 to do with the nutrition of plants, or with the development of 

 plant-food in the soil? The farmer says he has done his duty 

 when he has given the land a certain quantity of coarse, crude, 

 raw material in mass ; but what have the seasons to do with 

 the development of plant-nutrition? Much, every way. In 

 the first place, the chemical condition of the air remains 

 about the same year after year, generation after generation. 

 There are slight variations between the air of the town or the 

 city and the open country ; but, on the whole, the air always 



