390 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



rity. Some scientific persons assert that the principal, if not the 

 only, use of the soil is for the support of the plant, and that the 

 food of the plant is derived wholly from the atmosphere. In the 

 heat of their imaginations, they have even asserted that a man s 

 fields may be enriched, or rather his growing crops may be fed, by 

 the exhalations from his neighbor s manure-heap in an adjoining 

 field. This would be very much like a man s being fed by 

 standing over the grating of a hotel, or a cook s shop kitchen, in 

 London, and inhaling the odors from the savory viands which 

 are there in the process of preparation. How much flesh might 

 be gained, and how long life might be sustained, in this way, we 

 shall know when the experiment is once successfully tested. 

 That plants receive a large proportion of their nourishment from 

 the air, does not admit of a doubt. But the calculations of the phil 

 osophical chemists as to the amount of carbon which the atmos 

 phere, taking it at its estimated height of forty-five miles, is ca 

 pable of supplying, (equal, according to some calculators, to the 

 sum of seven tons to an acre ;) and the discussion of the great 

 question how the atmosphere was first supplied with this great 

 element in vegetable life ; and the apprehension which some 

 persons express, on account of the supposed actual diminution 

 of carbon, though there appears to be enough, according to the 

 most rigid calculations, to last several thousand years longer, 

 are. to say the least of them, sufficiently amusing ; but of what prac 

 tical use they can be to the common farmer, is not so easy to de 

 termine. If the animal creation is to be starved out some thou 

 sands of years hence, it need not give the present generation, 

 whose average of life does not much exceed thirty-five years, 

 any great personal concern. It will not be a harder fate than 

 that which certain of what are called the higher order of animals 

 seem disposed to anticipate for some of their fellow-beings now 

 living. But, whatever may be the part which the atmosphere 

 performs in the food or nourishment of vegetables, it is beyond 

 .human power to affect or control it, unless we can grow our crops 

 under bell-glasses or in greenhouses. The duke of Devonshire, 

 in his magnificent conservatory at Chatsworth, three hundred 

 feet long, seventy-five feet wide, and sixty-four feet in height, 

 heated by seven miles of pipes, and covering, with its appurte 

 nances, a full acre of ground, might manage to charge the atmos 

 phere in which his plants respire with gases exactly suited to 



