12 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



tute for the old fallow manures, and are obliged, therefore, to 

 keep a heavy stock to make manures to enrich your farm and 

 get good crops, these artificial manures — ^your phosphates, your 

 potashes, and the various combinations of nitrogenous substances 

 — may be taken into the interior, to any distance, and the farmer 

 who cannot keep cattle, or has to commence without them, can 

 immediately proceed to fertilize his farm and get full crops. If 

 that be true, as it seems to be true, then concentrated salts, with 

 the addition of humus, and the small percentage of lime neces- 

 sary to make that humus accessible to the plant, will enable 

 you, as in the presence of manures, with the addition of the 

 other salts, to go on to success. 



Of carbonaceous matters, it does not appear that it is neces- 

 sary to have a great supply, any further than to amend the soil, 

 so as to enable it to resist droughts and heavy rain. The soil, 

 in other words, must have a proper mechanical preparation ; it 

 must be in the nature of a sponge, which will hold the solution 

 you put to it, otherwise it might run to waste before the plant 

 could apply it to its own uses, and grow into stalks and grain. 



Prof. Ville has published a little brochure, entitled " Six Lec- 

 tures on Agriculture." Some of you must have seen it ; some, 

 perhaps, have not. Let me read a few excerpts from the 

 translator's preface : — 



" When agi-iculturists demand an analysis to test the richness of a 

 field, and repair its losses after each harvest, they lose sight of the fact 

 that each field has its own peculiar wants, and what will suit one may 

 not suit another. 



" It is by stating the problem in these terms that M. Ville has arrived 

 at its solution. He has studied the appetites of each plant, or at least of 

 those three great families of plants upon which agricultural industry 

 is mostly exercised, viz. : the cereals, leguminous plants, and roots ; and 

 he has deduced from this study the formula of a normal manure. * * 



" To operate with greater certainty, M. Ville removed every element 

 of error or doubt from his experiments, and proceeded by the synthetic 

 method. He took calcined sand for his soil, and common flower-pots for 

 his field. Ten years of assiduous observation and experiment led him 

 to recognize that the aliment preferred by cereals is — nitrogen ; by 

 leguminous plants — potassa ; by roots — the phosphates ; we say the 

 preferred, but not the exclusive ; for these three substances, in various 

 proportions, are necessary to each and all, and even lime, which humus 

 renders assimilable, must be added. 



