38 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



coming crop requires, unless the fertilizers be mixed with 

 pulverized clay, prepared peat, charcoal, or some other 

 medium whicH -will retain the surplus for future crops. 



Land must be thoroughly pulverized, and the fertilizers 

 fully reduced for their greatest solubility, so that particles of 

 the soil and of the fertilizer are brought in closest contact. 

 The use of a land-roller materially aids the process. In 

 short, there must be careful cultivation of the soil, and exact 

 chemical manipulation of the fertilizer, because all plants 

 derive their nutriment from solution of gases, and all manures 

 aj'e valuable in the ratio of their actual solubility or the 

 nature of the soil to make them so. This is true of every 

 kind of fertilizer, whether derived fi'om your barn-yards or 

 the mercantile substitutes which you can supplement them 

 with. 



Air, water and change of temperature disintegrate rocks 

 and render their alkali soluble, by which, in time, our most 

 fruitful soil is produced. The fruitful lands around Naples, 

 constituted chiefly of lava, have produced corn for a thousand 

 years without manures. This soil is fertilized l)y the air by 

 means of some chemical affinity with the lava every third 

 year, when it is allowed to lie ftillow for the purpose. This 

 lava does not contain a particle of vegetal de matter, proving 

 that vegetable mould or humus, so highly valued by old 

 farmers, is not a fertilizer, but is merely the medium by 

 which fertilizers are retained, and valuable only as the decayed 

 vegetation composing it happened to be more or less impreg- 

 nated with fertilizing ingredients. The utility of ploughing 

 in green crops, therefore, must be subject to the same 

 conditions, depending on the fertilizing nature and quantity 

 of the crop ploughed under, and in my opinion, is as expensive 

 a mode of fertilizing the land as keeping a cow in winter 

 to manufacture eight dollars' worth of manures by feeding 

 thirty dollars' worth of hay. 



Air is perhaps the most active and efficient aid of the 

 farmer, furnishing not only the larger part of the fertilizing 

 ingredients of our soil, but is the prime means of utilizing 

 the fertilizers which we apply to our lands. Its chemical 

 action disintegrates the hardest rocks, producing new com- 

 binations of productive energy, as well for the farmer as for 



