202 STATE BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



surround himself with the means of social culture, bear a remarkable and cer- 

 tain ratio to the productiveness of the cultivated kingdom, of whicli he is the 

 )nonarcli and the lord. A highly developed people is nowhere found living in a 

 barren country. Active inquiry and poor land cannot exist together, or in close 

 neighborhood, because the power and skill with which knowledge arras the 

 hand and directs the use of material forces will awaken the dormant energies 

 of nature, causing the stalk to yield its grain, and the tree its fruit, even in the 

 midst of barrenness. By means of knowledge a barren soil is quickly turned 

 into a rivih and productive estate, rewarding the hand and elevating the head 

 which wrought the change. 



Among all advanced peoples, the careful treatment of arable lands and the 

 gradual increase of its productiveness are classed by the wisest statesmen among 

 the primary objects of a sound public economy. Farmers who are business 

 men, — those who are really prosperous and successful, take especial care of the 

 soil and keep it in such a state of fertility that they are as sure of good crops as 

 tliey can be of good returns from any other industry, business or employment. 

 Throughout the domain of modern agricultural literature, controversy and dis- 

 cussion, no subject holds so important a place as that of farm fertility, or man- 

 uring the soil for profit. It altogetlier depends upon the farmer himself to say 

 whether his farm shall grow ricli or grow poor, and consequently, whether he 

 will add to his stores or allow them to grow less and less as the earth rolls on 

 beneath him. 



There is immense danger in exclusive grain-growing, and selling it off the 

 farm in its raw state. Tlie farmer, like the manufacturer, should aim to put 

 the last value possible upon everything he produces, before he ever allows it to 

 leave his hand. The larger portion — much the larger portion — of the Avheat 

 grown in this county is sold off in its raw state, and yet, without question, the 

 true policy of every farmer is to convert the grain into flour and retain the offal 

 to feed more animals, for young stock and milch cows. The young animals 

 need it to build up bones and tissues, and it should never leave the farm except 

 in the form of meat or dairy products — these being the final result, the most 

 Taluable ])roducts that the olfal of grain and that coarse provender can be 

 turned into. 



But 1 come now directly to the subject set down in the programme for this 

 paper, numely, ''Farm Fertilizers." And whatever I may be able to say 

 about the materials and elements employed by the farmers of this county, and 

 of the west generally, to replenish the waste caused by crop-growing, it cannot 

 be half so important as for every farmer to establish a law for himself — an 

 unalterable provision in his code of farm rules — to fertilize a cetain proportion 

 of his farm each year in so thorough a manner that he may go through a 

 proper five years' rotation, and have it to show that each field is a little richer 

 at the end. 



There are tliree classes of farm fertilizers commonly employed by farmers 

 liere to keep up their farms — vegetable, animal, and mineral. Among the 

 first I shall speak i)articularly of clover and swamp muck. Clover is more 

 important than all the other vegetable fertilizers combined, and is more gen- 

 erally employed for this purpose in this country than in the whole world besides, 

 as a cheap and very efficient means of fertilizing and restoring old fields and 

 of sustaining tlie vital power of those in good condition. A knowledge of the 

 processes of vegetable nutrition establishes the facts tluit the atmosphere con- 

 tains exhaustless quantities of carbonic acid and of nitrogen, and that the 



