THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



531 



the soil, as we shall presently exemplify. But the 

 portion which does not reach the ocean may be 

 thus viewed— one example will suffice for all : — 



Whether the vegetable be consumed as animal 

 food, burnt, suffered to decay by rotting, or be 

 fermented, as in the manufacture of alcohol, beer, 

 &c., still all components are restored to the soil in 

 a district sufficiently large to receive the results 

 within its area ; millions of cords of wood might 

 be burnt at its centre, and all the results of that 

 combustion would simply go to increase the weight 

 of the current growing crops. We cannot send 

 forth into the atmospheric ocean, during a growing 

 season, any of the organic portions which will not 

 be re-assimilated at an early date ; the dews and 

 rains acting as the cleansing agents of the atmo- 

 sphere, bring them to soil where the roots of plants 

 immediately receive and re-produce them in organic 

 form. The inorganic portions, being in a condi- 

 tion to be readily assimilated, are more slowly, but 

 with the same certainty, re-appropriated. 



The bones of the United States, until within a 

 few years, have principally been exported to Eng- 

 land, and while the wheat crop has sunk from 

 thirty or thirty-five bushels to the acre to an ave- 

 rage of eleven, that of England has increased from 

 eleven to twenty-eight. The earlier advancement 

 of the manufacturing arts in England has called 

 for the potash lixiviated from the ashes of our 

 forests, and this in turn, after being, used by the 

 manufacturers, has found its way to the farms, and 

 is still doing so to an extent that tends to denude 

 other countries of progressed potash, and to give 

 it place in English crops. 



To the extent that we can keep the results of in- 

 organic decay, such as are consequent upon home 

 consumption, within our own country, we shall 

 put off the date for this partial exhaust'on, and 

 therefore the time when large districts must again 

 remain in a quiescent state, to recupei'ate by na- 

 ture's laws, will be deferred. There are but two 

 ways in which soils, said to be worn out — which 

 simply means that all the progressed pabulum it 

 contains, or at least a large portion of it, has been 

 removed in the form of crops— can be restored ; 

 firstly, by the importation of progressed pabulum 

 from elsewhere, and its addition to the soil ; and 

 secondly, by the adoption of such means as will 

 progress the primaries and proximales contained in 

 that soil, to a status or condition that will render 

 them fit to form new organisms. Each of these in 

 degree can be availed of at the same time ; and 

 thus farmers who under-drain, subsoil-plough, 

 and furnish to the soil fertilising materials from 

 elsewhere, even in minute quantities, may raise 

 green crops ; the introduction of which into the 

 soil, in addition to the progressed pabulum im- 

 ported, will cause new portions of the primaries to 

 be liberated from their prison-houses (the grains of 

 sand composing that soil), and in new proximate 

 conditions, so that the soil is again restored. 



This still further procrastinates sterility ; but if 

 at any time the soil be denuded of progressed con- 

 stituents, it may be called sterile, and for all prac- 

 tical purposes to the present generation it must 

 remain so, as without the means we have indicated 

 the operations of nature's laws, by atmospheric 



influence, are too slow to furnish from the soil 

 itself, by progression, the necessary constituents in 

 proper condition for the protection of plant-life. 



Now, let us examine the course of such pabu- 

 lum as has foimd, and is continually finding 

 its way to the ocean. The Mississippi sends 

 into the Atlantic, daily, progressed pabulum result- 

 ing from the decay of organic life, through the 

 Mississippi valley and other valleys and streams 

 which empty into the Mississippi, an amount 

 which would be competent to fertilize a county. 

 The La-Plata, the Rio-Grande, and all the rivers 

 of the Gulf, and indeed all rivers, are, in degree, 

 sending their portions to the ocean. These con- 

 stituents are the same as would result fi'om the 

 burning of these crops, and would be found in 

 their ashes. All the large cities send by their 

 sewerage the real value of all they consume to the 

 ocean, and there nature's laws seem to be active for 

 the carrying back to the soil all these very ingre- 

 dients. The algae thrown upon the coast go to 

 fertilize farms in their vicinity; the fish taken from 

 the ocean and consumed by man restore to the 

 soil much of the salts of lime, and, indeed, of the 

 nitrogenous portions which have been previously 

 given up by plants ; the shells of shell-fish con- 

 tribute largely to the restoration of progressed lime ; 

 oils consumed in lamps and brought from the 

 ocean furnish many of the compounds found in 

 plant-Hfe. Their combustion simply throws these 

 proximates into the atmosphere, whence the dews 

 and rains restore them to the soil. 



The sea- fowl deposits in its excretia, on the 

 continent, the food which it consumes on the 

 ocean, and the immense deposits of guano at the 

 Chincha Islands, the aggregations of centuries, are 

 now being carried to enrich continents ; and when 

 we see the immense amount collected on so small 

 an area, and know that, in degree at least, a large 

 portion of the earth's surface has been more gra- 

 dually receiving similar deposits from birds, some 

 idea may be had of how much is restored to the 

 land from the ocean by these means. 



But the restoration from the ocean to the land 

 does not cease here : the upheavals in nature bring 

 back trillions of tons of valuable matter for re- 

 assimilation. Take any one of the primaries, and 

 trace it through its various ramifications in the 

 ocean, and this fact may be clearly illustrated thus : 

 all the lime resulting from the decay of crops on 

 the continents, and which in solution is passing 

 into the ocean, may go to form the shells of shell- 

 fish and the bones of fishes, millions of times 

 before the coral insect takes it to build his habita- 

 tion. Those mountains of coral imbedded in the 

 ocean are occasionally, by upheaval, constituted 

 portions of the soil ; and one ton of this coral, 

 after having undergone the changes consequent 

 upon again meeting with the atmosphere for a 

 sufficient time, is worth an untold amount of lime 

 in a more primitive condition for agricultural 

 purposes. 



We find in many parts of the world soils con- 

 taining forty per cent, of decomposed coral (car- 

 bonate of lime), and still these soils are fertile; but 

 if we add two per cent, of carbonate of lime, made 

 by burning the primitive limestone; and exposing 



