On increasing our Supplies of Animal Food. 343 



look as the source of any great or general increase in the produce 

 of animal food. 



The soil, not to speak of its exclusively mechanical offices, is 

 itself the food of plants ; it is also a store-room of their food ; it 

 is a laboratory in which their food is prepared ; and it is the 

 channel of conveyance through which their food is administered. 

 Its fertility depends on all these circumstances: the soil is most 

 fertile in relation to any particular j9Za7z^ when, in addition to pos- 

 sessing a texture suitable to its growth, it is composed of material 

 whose gradual decomposition furnishes the food the plant re- 

 quires ; and fertility is at its highest in relation to any particular 

 climate when in addition to a texture fitting it for the growth of 

 the most valuable plants which that climate can ripen, the soil 

 is in all its characters of storehouse, laboratory, and food vehicle, 

 the best fitted to meet the extremes of heat and cold, drought and 

 moisture, to which it is subjected. By the improvement of a soil 

 in any of these respects its fertility may be increased ; as to its 

 texture, this may be altered to a standard adapting it for a better 

 rotation of crops or fitting it more perfectly to the climate under 

 which it lies ; as a storehouse it may be kept more constantly full 

 by less expensive methods; as a laboratory, liming, may be used 

 to convert its inert or poisonous " chemicals " into nourishing 

 food, and draining will with the best effect introduce air and rain- 

 water into its mixtures : while as the food vehicle, if its action be 

 too rapid and wasteful, it may be retarded by claying or marling ; 

 if too slow, it may be accelerated by drainage. But, to drop the 

 language of theory, we have not space to allude j)articularly to 

 the modes of improving the texture of soils which marling and 

 draining and burning them supply, nor to refer at any length to 

 the increased fertility occasioned by a more economical manage- 

 ment of home-made manures and by the use of purchased fer- 

 tilisers, as guano, bone-dust, &c. I have not room to estimate 

 here in detail the benefit arising from the more extensive cultiva- 

 tion of manure-producing crops, as the turnip, mangold wurzel, 

 &c., and from the fallow cultivation of which these crops admit 

 during their growth ; nor can I do more than merely allude to 

 drainage as the great fertiliser, which it is by admitting the air 

 and all its food particles into the land, by subjecting the soil 

 throughout its substance to the action of atmospheric solvents, 

 and by facilitating the conveyance of the food it thus provides 

 and prepares to the roots of plants. All these are subjects 

 proper for long and interesting essays of themselves ; I can do 

 little more than merely enumerate them here in reference to 

 their influence on the ultimate products of agriculture, as they 

 induce an increased produce of vegetable food on which a more 

 numerous herd of cattle may be fed. 



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