98 TALKS ABOUT THE SOIL. 



lands, and perhaps in some countries hundreds of years 

 before it was given this name. The fact that manure 

 can be used to improve soils, and thus improve crops, 

 has probably been known in China for thousands of 

 years. There is no record of the time or place where 

 the discovery was really made. It is not important to 

 know dates and names in such a matter. It was one 

 of those great discoveries that first taught men how to 

 win wealth from the ground ; and it probably did more 

 to help men to become civilized than any other single 

 discovery ever made. No fanciful goddess whispered 

 the secret to priests in ancient temples : it was dis- 

 covered by experiment. While this great fact that 

 manure placed in the soil improves it, and benefits all 

 plants growing in it has been known for a long time, 

 it was only within a short time that men learned by 

 experiments why and how it works. 



We go out in the fields, and see grass or oats grow- 

 ing in the soil. We know these plants take from the 

 ground more or less of the fourteen elements in the 

 soil. We know, if the grass and oats are cut down 

 and carried away to the barn, the soil is robbed of a 

 portion of each of these elements. We know for 

 our worn-out farms in New England prove it that if 

 we go on year after year carrying away all the plants 

 that will grow in the fields, the time will come when 

 one, two, or three of these fourteen elements will be 

 used up, and the plants will grow less and less, year by 

 year, and refuse to produce enough to pay for planting 

 the seed. In the barn we find a horse eating this 



