FARMS. G7 



hinted, the grand idea is that for reasons providential, 

 and therefore sometimes beyond mortal eomprclicnsion, the 

 resources of mother earth are found to be boundless and inex- 

 haustible — we say sometimes beyond our comprehension ; we 

 might have put it stronger, and say it is, perhaps generally so ; 

 and yet, notwithstanding the whole philosophy of plant growth 

 has for ages been wrapped in darkness as intense as midnight, 

 the chemists have brought forward, within a comparatively 

 recent period, an accumulation of important and beautiful 

 facts of amazing signification. And the encouraging result is, 

 these facts are not, as heretofore, lying buried beneath the 

 crucibles of the chemists, but the agricultural world is now 

 being blest with men who can appreciate and appropriate 

 them. So long as gentlemen can be found, who, like the 

 accomplished owner of the Pickman Farm, are willing to 

 spend a part of every day actually in the field — if not literally 

 with book in hand, yet with the knowledge of it in his head — 

 reducing to practice great scientific truths, and watching the 

 progress and the results, and then, like him communicating the 

 whole without hesitation or reserve, — so long is there a briglit 

 future for the farmer. 



The committee would distinctly call the attention of all who 

 read the statement of Dr. Loring, to his remarks upon the use of 

 sand as a manure, recollecting, however, that much of his farm 

 is inclining to clay, or being decidedly so. In addition to tlic 

 more palpable uses of the sand descri!)ed by him, is the 

 mechanical one of its uniting first with the manure itself, thus 

 opening, dividing and making a passage through it for the 

 rootlets long before they would otherwise find one ; but also, 

 and more especially, carrying on this important operation of 

 dividing and pulverizing the tenacious soil itself. Look at a 

 lump of pure clay, and imagine, if you can, how long it would 

 take the ordinary processes of cultivation to make it produc- 

 tive I But sand — river sand, salt sand — will open its unwilling 

 jaws. It is not a manure in itself; but it is the pioneer open- 

 ing a pathway for the forces that shall make the wilderness 

 blossom as the rose. Dr. Nichols tells us that a plant is 

 like an infant as respects its preparation of food. It has no 

 teeth to masticate, no salivary glands to pour out diluting 

 fluids to render digestible its rocky aliment ; it can receive it 



