HORTICULTURE. 117 



and discussion. Horticulture has such a recognized moral influence that 

 homes are not considered complete without trees and flowers and a n atur 

 ally developed love for them. Farm boys, for example, will not be nearly 

 as liable to wander and drift into bad paths if they are brought up under 

 the influence of homes which have been properly laid out and gradually 

 developed, into which the coldest winds can not reach, where sunshine 

 has full power to develop all upon which it may fall. The young man 

 who can leave a home surrounded by a neat lawn, decorated with flowers 

 and protected and made beautiful by trees as he passes out into the un- 

 tried world, without deep emotion and strong resolutions to build well his 

 own fortune, is very rare. The immediate substantial benefits of farm 

 horticulture to the farmer are many: In health, in saving of bills for food, 

 in lumber or wood, in doctors' bills, and last but not least, in comfort. 



But the question most needing discussion is the relation of forests to 

 climate and how agriculture is assisted by the presence of a large percent- 

 age of forest-planted lands in all farming regions. 



MANURING. 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF MANURING, 



BY PROF. SAMUEL B. GREEN, STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 



It is very difficult to define in a few lines and in exact language, the 

 full significance of the term manure. Its etymological meaning is from 

 main, hand and ouvrer, to work. Originally manuring was regarded as the 

 working of the land, by which the soil was exposed to the action of the 

 atmosphere, and plant food was produced from the insoluble food already 

 in the land. 



Perhaps Joseph Harris' definition of a manure is as complete as any ,1 e.: 

 "Manure is anything containing an element or the elements of plants, 

 which, if the soil needed it, would, if supplied in sufficient quantity and 

 in an available condition, produce according to soil, season, climate and 

 variety, a maximum crop." 



WHAT THE PLANT NEEDS. 



Having thus defined manure, let us glance at the plant and its needs. 

 Plant growth may be defined as the transformation of inorganic into 

 organic substances. 



All plants require certain elements for their growth, but not all in the 

 same proportion. The combustible parts of agricultural plants contain 

 the elements, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon; and these with the 

 exception of the nitrogen in some plants is all received from the atmos- 

 phere—practically then, all the heat producing parts of all fuel and of all 

 plants comes from the air. 



The ash of agricultural plants contains lime, potash, soda, phosphoric 

 acid, chlorine, silica, iron and sulphur— these elements are the non-com- 

 bustible parts and are received by the plants entirely from the soil. 



