MANUS A HAND. 99 



grass and oats, and consuming these very elements the 

 plants took from the ground. After each meal the 

 horse digests his food ; using a part to keep himself 

 warm, and enable him to live, grow, and work, and re- 

 jecting all the rest. Beneath the barn we know there 

 lies in the cellar a quantity of matter, unfit for any 

 purpose except to be buried in the ground out of 

 sight. Chemists tell us that in this matter are portions 

 of the- fourteen elements carried away from the soil 

 by the plants that were eaten by the horse. This is 

 nature's grand circle : that which the plants take from 

 the ground, the animals return. Thus it is true that 

 seedtime and harvest shall not fail. The soil will never 

 fail to give bountiful harvests, while plants grow, and 

 animals live. The only thing that stands in the way 

 is the selfishness and greediness of men, who by the 

 means of plants rob the soil, taking all its elements 

 away, and bringing none back again. We gather wheat 

 and corn in vast and wonderful harvests, and send it 

 away to Europe. We carry off thousands of tons from 

 our land every year in tobacco-plants ; and then with 

 stupendous folly burn it up, and wonder why our soils 

 grow poorer and poorer year by year. We may think 

 the farmer's manure-heap very vulgar, and refuse to 

 think or speak about it ; yet so God has arranged the 

 law of his beautiful world : that which the plant needs, 

 the animal returns. Let no man call any thing un- 

 clean. " Dirt is matter out of place ; " and half the 

 science of agriculture consists in knowing how to put 

 the right thing in the right place. 



