CHAPTER I 

 THE SOIL, THE PLANT, THE ANIMAL 



How Nature Is Balanced. The soil, the plant, 

 and the animal represent the three great fields of 

 agricultural activity. They are dependent upon one 

 another, each giving to, or receiving from, the others 

 the things vital to its very existence. Without a 

 soil, there would be, of course, neither plant nor ani- 

 mal life; without plants there could be no animals; 

 and without plants or animals there would be a use- 

 less, if not a barren soil. 



The three divisions of nature have come in natural 

 order. First, the soil; then tiny plants, that were 

 succeeded in time by other plants of a higher form, 

 to which animals welcomed themselves, satisfying 

 their appetites and nourishing their bodies with 

 what they secured as food. Soil is food for plants, 

 the plant is food for animals, and the dead animal or 

 plant is food for the soil. 



Plant Food a Small Part of Soil. The whole of 

 the soil is not plant food only certain elements : 

 chemical elements, we call them. In all nature there 

 are 81 known distinct substances or elements. They 

 are called elements because they represent distinct 

 substances not one of which can be broken up into 

 two or more other distinct substances. Common 

 table salt is not an element, since it can be separated 

 into two elements, sodium and chlorine. Neither 



