MIXTURE OF SOILS. 127 



over, where is the man ? That is the condition of any soil that 

 is fertilized with nitrogenous manures. Barnyard manure con- 

 tains that element, and that sets the land to work. Then barn- 

 yard manure has all those soluble salts, phosphates, nitrates, 

 <fcc, which give food directly to the plant, and so it is at work 

 all the time, doing in one mass what chemists and ingenious 

 farmers are endeavoring to do by furnishing a substitute for 

 each one of these active processes. It seems to me that that is 

 the best illustration of the diverse ways in which manures act 

 upon plants that I can possibly give you. 



Then there is another fact with regard to fertilization which 

 I think farmers should not overlook. I have said that your 

 soils get exhausted ; so they do, but I am perfectly sure, gen- 

 tlemen, that the introduction of one soil to another may be 

 made useful. For instance, if you have a bed of sand, you 

 know perfectly well that you can increase the fertility of it by 

 putting muck into that sand, if the muck is of good quality, 

 and you know that you can improve the fertility of that soil by 

 the introduction of clay. Every man knows that he can 

 improve the fertility of his land by the mixture of one quality 

 of soil with another, and it may be that the different qualities 

 of soil are contained on the same farm, so that you can pro- 

 duce a good result from perfectly inert sand, when you mix with 

 it soil of another character. Now, if we have on our own farms, 

 lying side by side, diverse soils, which, if introduced to each 

 other, will increase the fertility of our lands, that will help us 

 a great deal. Everybody in Essex County knows that if he 

 spreads two or three cartloads of sand upon his grass land it 

 will make herdsgrass grow there as if he had sown barnyard 

 manure upon the soil. That is one of the things that every 

 practical farmer can test for himself, and I have no doubt that 

 that will do a great deal towards the restoration of the old 

 farms which we consider worn out. Every man who has a sand- 

 hill and a clay-bed can try it, and you may depend upon it, that 

 if the same industry and skill and one-quarter part of the 

 money that are now spent in experimenting with manures, 

 could be spent in the marrying of one kind of land to another — 

 " and what God has joined let no man put asunder " — we should 

 see results that would astonish us. 



That seems to me the foundation of the whole business, and 



