374 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



given to live od, and whatever is taken from it as food should be re- 

 turned as manure. Land so treated will increase in fertility, but land 

 continually under the plow not only loses the mechanical condition 

 favorable to fruitfulness, but insect life is thereby greatly increased.. 

 Very minute creatures attack the tender plants, and sometimes a crop 

 will nearly be destroyed, while the same kind of plants, the same sea- 

 son, on land less injuriously treated, will yield a remunerative crop. 



Let land be properly dealt with, and chemistry will then come to- 

 the aid of cultivators of the soil, teaching them how to strengthen the 

 growth of their plants, how to hasten the time of ripening, how im- 

 prove the quality of their grain, and to increase the aroma of fruit, and 

 how to cause soils now yielding inferior plants to bring forth superior 

 ones. It teaches us that alkalies give strength and stability to the 

 stalk, that the phosphates hasten maturity, that lime renders peas more 

 melting, potatoes more mealy, and has changed rye lands into wheat- 

 growing tields. It will also tell us of the action of carbonic acid gas 

 on the small particles of rocky matter in the soil, and what chemical 

 changes result from the frequent admission of common air into the 

 ground in the process of cultivation. 



There is much land worn out by bad management and so located 

 that to bring it in condition with barnyard manure is out of the ques- 

 tion, as it takes time with barnyard manure to get lands again into con- 

 dition, whereas by the use of artificial fertilizers lands may be made at 

 once to produce paying crops. As long as a farm has not reached the 

 highest point of cultivation, every means must be pronounced accept- 

 able which puts the farmer in a position to provide his fields with 

 more liberal dressing than he is able to give them from his own supply 

 of home-produced natural manure, Whoever seeks to arrive quickly 

 at this stage of cultivation must make extensive use of those auxiliary 

 or artificial manures that are now offered him by commerce. 



As long as these powerful agents for increasing the production* 

 of lands were unknown, an advantageous rotation of crops was indeed 

 the only means of insuring a large yield from the farm, and this leads 

 slowly but surely to the result ; now, on the contrary, it is the farmer's- 

 power, by buying additional manures, to attain his object with far 

 greater rapidity. The more extended employment of artificial manures 

 is an advance in farming that has already opened a new era. By this 

 means, the business of a farmer is becoming more closely approxi- 

 mated than formerly to that of a manufacturer. 



For while formerly our farming arraogements were conducted in 

 the manner which the quantity of manure produced on the farm itself 

 prescribed, we are now free to cultivate, as may seem most profitable, 

 every plant which is suited to the soil. Andrew H. Ward, Mass. 



