132 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



further accelerated. Few stopped to consider the penalty 

 which must sooner or later attach to the transgression of 

 the first great laws of agriculture. 



Every million bushels of wheat, with the accompanying 

 straw, removed from the land $402,900 worth of potash, 

 nitrogen and phosphoric acid ; and the 490,000,000 bushels 

 raised last year represented $197,421,000 worth of these 

 three prime elements of plant growth A conservative 

 estimate would put the amount of these elements carried 

 back to the field at not more than one-fourth of the amount 

 removed by the wheat and straw. Is it any wonder that 

 the exacting wheat plant moves its habitat westward, to 

 escape the penalty of the transgression of the laws which 

 govern its successful cultivation ? 



Many have broken the laws of pomology, and numberless 

 starving orchards furnish "nothing but leaves," and these 

 scarcely sufficient for the vast broods of Lepidoptera and 

 Coleoptera which infest them. When we consider the vast 

 variety and quantity of farm products which have been 

 removed from the fields of New England in the last hundred 

 years, we are led to conclude that the description of some 

 of the earlier discoverers of the beauty and fertility of 

 " the New England" was not greatly exaggerated. 



By this array of discouraging facts it is not meant to find 

 fault, or to cast blame on our ancestors. Many well-kept, 

 fertile fields, numerous stately farm-houses in which dwell 

 refinement and plenty, testify to their intelligence, courage, 

 wisdom and success. They did nobly ; it is unnecessary to 

 speak of their heroic deeds here and now, for annually at 

 every New England Thanksgiving dinner their virtues 

 are justly lauded and their bravery set forth in story and in 

 song. But they made many mistakes, they broke many 

 laws, they set nature's mode of action at defiance. They 

 said, " Let us go to now, and rear many plants and animals, 

 that we may have good things in store, and let those who 

 come after us raise plants too, if they can, or ' go West.'" 

 They should have said, " Let us go to now, and study the 

 laws of nature, that we may work in harmony with them, 

 and raise plants to feed animals to make fertility, to feed 

 other plants, to feed other animals, to make more fertility." 



