CHAPTER II. 



OUR PLANTS. 



How TO FEED THEM. 



OUR plants, like our animals, live, feed, grow, and 

 die. It is only by feeding them alike liberally that 

 we can hope to make them produce bountifully. 



Until a person comes to consider his growing 

 plants as if they were his growing animals, claiming 

 his care and attention, and looking to him to supply 

 them, largely, with the food they must consume, 

 then, and not till then, is he in possession of the prin- 

 ciples that constitute successful farming. At first 

 glance it would seem that the above statement was 

 so self-evident that there was little use of mention- 

 ing it, but when we look about a little and notice 

 the way that many farmers starve their growing 

 plants, even when they do not starve their cattle, it 

 shows that they have never looked at their growing 

 plants in this light. 



What has this to do with soiling? It is the princi- 

 pal thing, as a celebrated English general- once said 

 in reply to the War Department, which said to him : 

 " General, it seems to the War Department that 

 the thing that most concerned you in India was the 

 growing of forage for bullocks. " "Yes, sir; that's 



