42 TALKS ABOUT THE SOIL. 



the materials of a good soil. What would you do with 

 such a place ? How could the sandy field be improved, 

 and made to bear good crops ? Clearly, the thing to 

 do here is to bring that black organic peat and muck 

 from the bog, and put it on the sandy field. Here 

 our observations are beginning to be of value. We 

 are coming to see the value of agricultural science. 

 Perhaps the sandy field does not produce enough to 

 pay the taxes. Perhaps the bog is a dead waste, pro- 

 ducing nothing of value. Bring the result of your ob- 

 servations to bear on the subject. Get cart and horse, 

 and carry the organic material from the bog to the 

 inorganic material in the sandy field, or take the sand 

 to the bog. Bring the two together, and make a new 

 artificial soil where useful plants will grow, to give us 

 food, or supply food for cows that may give us milk, 

 cheese, and butter. 



DC. EXPERIMENTS WITH SOILS. Our obser- 

 vations have shown us that a soil composed wholly of 

 inorganic materials, or wholly of organic materials, 

 does not make a good home for plants. A few plants 

 may manage to live in a field of sand made from in- 

 organic rocks ; but their lives are very uncertain, and, 

 even if they manage to live, they are not plants of any 

 value. We do not call them useful plants. They are 

 neither wheat, roses, nor good red cabbage. The use- 

 ful plants that give us wealth from the ground will not 

 thrive in such a soil. A large number of wild plants 

 will grow in bogs and peaty meadows, but for a first- 

 rate garden such a place is not of any value. The 



