Natural Laws. 457 



the terms employed in their descriptions. Learn to detect 

 imperfection, and to select the most perfect seeds, and such 

 varieties of plants as are best adapted to a given locality, to 

 the supply of om- own wants and the wants of tlie market. 

 Our seeds must possess perfectly developed germs, be 

 selected from those plants which, by a long course of good 

 ciilture, have attained the most perfect and symmetrical 

 development, and have assumed a fixed character. Plants, 

 like animals, may be improved, or by bad management 

 may become dwarfed and sickly. The vigor, the life princi- 

 ple of which I have spoken, which the germs of all healthy 

 seeds possess, may be so reduced in its vitality by continued 

 bad culture that the rootlets of the plant will not penetrate 

 the best soils sufficiently to take up the nutriment necessary 

 to produce a large crop. A weak and sickly growth and 

 light yield are not always attributable to the soil which pro- 

 duce them, or to the seasons, but may often be attributed 

 to previous bad culture. Of such crops we say that the seed 

 has run out, and like produces its like again. Good culture 

 is but the observ^ance and application of natural laws, and 

 bad culture implies their violation. 



AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY. 



It is for us to learn the constituents of our soils, and also 

 of those plants which we would grow upon the diiferent 

 varieties. If all the elements which enter into the compo- 

 sition of our plants do not exist in the soil or atmosphere, it 

 is useless to expect to mature a crop. That field which once 

 produced thirty or forty bushels of wheat per acre, and now 

 produces but ten, when, to the casual observer, all the con- 

 ditions which ensure a good crop seem equally favorable, 



