HIGH FARMING. 215 



the mineral contents of vegetables, and assured us, that if 

 we supplied the soil with those mineral elements, the ve- 

 getables would find their organic elements for themselves. 

 We all ran after him. But his doctrine came to a natural 

 end, not by experiment, but by experience. The mineral 

 elements of wheat were supplied to the soil, and the return 

 in wheat was nil. And so the mineral theory is gone. 

 Now have arisen a marvellous flight of philosophers, 

 Lawes, Gilbert, Way, Boussingault, Playfair, and others, 

 who agree wonderfully in the main, and teach us, that am- 

 monia is absolutely the only manure for cereals ; that 

 phosphorus is probably the only manure for turnips, and 

 perhaps for the other legumina (but of this we are not cer- 

 tain) ; and that it is doubtful whether carbon be a manure 

 at all. We cannot help remembering the old farmer, who 

 broke into a momentary pause in an animated dissertation 

 on alkalies, and carbonates, and silicates, with the blunt 

 exclamation, u I' my opinion there's nought like muck." 

 And though we are by no means inclined to dispute, or 

 even to doubt, that these philosophers have rightly esta- 

 blished the singularly- vary ing appetites and antipathies of 

 our cereals and legumina, we cannot forget, that, either by 

 a wonderful chance or by a special providence, the refuse 

 of these vegetables taken almost indiscriminately, and the 

 excrements of animals, taken in the same manner, form 

 a compound in which every object of culture finds the ele- 

 ments necessary for its vigorous growth and perfection. 

 And so universal we had almost said, so equal is the 

 benefit, that, after thousands of years of experience, practi- 

 cal farmers are not even yet agreed to what crop their 

 home-made manure is most beneficially applied ; and 

 whereas one man bestows it on his wheat, another on his 

 beans, and a third on his turnips ; the fourth man lays it 

 on his mowing land, to be, if we are to believe our modern 

 instructors, exhausted by the sun, dissipated by the wind, 

 and drenched by the rain. Strange as the statement may 



