462 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



where I am confident they may add four-fold to the intrinsic 

 and marketable value of your farming lands. All the elements 

 of fertility that make your best flats worth $200 or $300 an 

 acre, exist in the atmosphere, in rain water, and in tlie earths of 

 all uplands, hills and mountains. These abound more or less in 

 agricultural salts such as I have briefly referred to in calling your 

 attention to the most productive lands in the Union. While I 

 doubt not you would find it profitable to purchase guano, lime, 

 gypsum, ashes and bone dust, to a certain extent, yet were I 

 farming here I should rely mainly on irrigation, and elements 

 derived from the earth below the soil, and from the atmos- 

 phere. While endeavoring to accumulate the essential elements 

 of crops in the soil as a permanent investment, capable of yield- 

 ing a good interest, I should sell nothing but air ofi" my farm in 

 the shape of choice butter and the very little earthy matter in 

 the bones and flesh of fat pigs and steers. If I were to burn 

 an ounce or pound of pure butter before you, no ashes or in- 

 combustible part would remain. As butter, lard and tallow 

 may be changed into vapor and gas, it is an important question 

 in farm economy how one can best transform vapor and gas 

 into butter, lard and tallow, by the wise use of poor land. 

 How, think you, the atoms of starch in this potato were formed 

 from carbon and water ? Although starch, oil and sugar con- 

 tain no earthy matter, yet to organize these substances some- 

 thing more than vegetable life, carbon, and water seems to be 

 necessary. 



Finding that half of the ash left on burning a potato, was 

 pure potash, and that new ground, rich in leaf mould, is much 

 better than old land, from which the soluble alkalies have been 

 washed and leached, or removed in crops, for the production 

 of this tuber, and plants rich in oil and sugar, I was induced to 

 experiment, several years ago, on the value of potash in organ- 

 izing starch, sugar, and oil. In the seeds of wheat, there are 

 six times more of this alkali than of lime ; and the same is 

 true, I believe, of all oil-bearing seeds, and of tlie ash of plants 

 that yield much sugar. How far soda may take the place of 

 potash, or magnesia that of lime, in the economy of vegetables, 

 is a matter to be decided by future researches. Soils compara- 

 tively rich in alkalies, produce the largest growth of forest 



