THE PLANT AND THE SOIL. 265 



Saturday, February 12. 



The Board met at 10 o'clock, A. M. 

 Colonel Ward, of Shrewsbury, was requested to preside, and 

 accordingly took the chair. 

 An Essay was presented upon 



PLANTS AS AN INDICATION OF THE NATURE OF THE SOIL. 



BY LEVI STOCKBEIDGE. 



An agricultural writer of the last century, says : " That all 

 kinds of vegetables are continually varying in their growth, 

 quality, production, and time of maturity, and he believes the 

 great author of nature has so constructed that wonderful machine 

 (the plant,) as to incline every kind of soil and climate, to 

 naturalize all kinds of vegetables it will produce, at any rate 

 the better to suit them, if the farmer will do his part in select- 

 ing the most proper seed." Practical experience proves the 

 truth of this quotation. Plants like men, become naturalized 

 to, multiply and thrive in a soil and climate, remote from, and 

 essentially different from that of their origin. Wheat, a plant 

 of Asiatic origin, has extended its field of growth throughout 

 the temperate zone, and into the borders of the frigid and torrid. 

 It flourishes alike in all Northern Africa, and in the frozen 

 regions and short summers of Norway and Labrador, the steppes 

 of Siberia, and the hills of New England and the Middle States, 

 and the prairies of the West. The same is true of the rye 

 plant ; and the potato, native in the mountains of South Amer- 

 ica, has made for itself, or found a genial soil and climate, in 

 nearly all countries as far north as sixty degrees of latitude. 

 The oaks of England, the larches of Scotland, and the maize of 

 North America, take kindly to opposite continents, and thrive 

 in a soil and climate unlike that of their nativity. 



Our forests are a mixture of all the trees of the temperate 

 zone. We find the different kinds of pine, oak, birch, the 

 chestnut, maple, hemlock, elm, and many others in contiguity 

 and often on the same acre, and all showing a growth neither 

 sickly nor scant, and this on soils of varying characteristics and 

 geological formations. The same soil that produces fine, perfect 

 wheat, bears luxuriant crops of tobacco ; the same brings forth 

 the skunk cabbage and flowers of rare beauty and delicious 



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