STUDY OF SOILS. 461 



the maximum quantity needed to grow wheat under the most 

 favorable auspices ; but whether one part in 100, or one in 500 

 or 1,000 will answer equally well I have never been able to 

 satisfy myself. So far as my observatiois have extended, all 

 farming lands that yield soft spring and well water need lime ; 

 and they very often lack other ingredients quite as much, which 

 the application of lime will not supply. 



In studying soils it is important to bear in mind that while 

 common stable manure is rarely worth over a dollar a ton, good 

 guano is worth fifty times that sum for the same weight. There 

 are thousands of farmers who arc now making three barrels of 

 wheat, or five of corn from one of manure ; and when the cream 

 of the best soils shall become an article of commerce, as I hope 

 it soon will, you may look for a revolution in New England 

 agriculture. You can hasten a material change for the better 

 by encouraging careful and reliable experiments in the feeding 

 of all plants and animals grown in Massachusetts ; or you may 

 prevent such change by opposing the establishment of an ex- 

 perimental farm in the State. Beyond all question, tillage and 

 husbandry embrace many experimental arts, and many experi- 

 mental sciences ; and I believe that it is just as easy in a long 

 run, to draw the food of annual crops from ten to twenty feet 

 below the surface of the ground, as from ten to twenty inches. 

 The earthy matter that enriches your creek and river flats came 

 from deep ravines, hillside-gullies and mountain-gorges, and not 

 mostly from the surface of uplands. Clay washed from one 

 hundred feet below the surface, and distributed as mud and 

 sediment, over meadows and pastures, rarely fails to enrich 

 them. Witnessing the good efi'ects of such deposits, I am ex- 

 pecting to rejuvenate a farm that was worn out by tobacco 

 culture before the Revolution, mainly by bringing the deep sub- 

 soil to the surface, and depositing it in gently flowing muddy 

 water. On every square yard of our land there falls about a 

 ton of water in twelve months. A few thousand tons of water 

 falling on the tops of hills on one's farm are no mean mechani- 

 cal power for spreading the most fertile substances which the 

 farmer can command, over all the ground below. Agricultural 

 mechanics and engineering are in their infancy ; and I confess 

 to you my anxiety to see them cultivated in New England, 



