MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



to destroy;— how know you that the little 

 fibrous rootlets will not presently be laying 

 their fine mouths to the neutral base, and by a 

 subtle alchemy of their own, work out such 

 restoration as shall mock at your efforts — in 

 all their rampant green, and their red or white 

 tassels of bloom ? 



The presence of any particular substance in 

 a crop, does not, ipso facto, warrant the applica- 

 tion of the same substance to the soil as the 

 condition of increased vigor. The man who, — 

 having retired to the shade for a fresh chapter 

 of Liebig, — finds that cellulose enters largely 

 into the structure of his plants, and thereupon 

 gives his crops a dressing of clean, pine saw- 

 dust, would very likely have his labor for his 

 pains. That wonderful vital laboratory of the 

 plant, has its own way of effecting combina- 

 tions; and stealing, as it does, the elements of 

 its needed cellulose, in every laughing toss of 

 its leaves — it scorns your offering. 



It is a chemical truth that the starch in pota- 

 toes or wheat, is the same thing with the 

 woody fibre of a tree ; but it is not an agricul- 

 tural fact— differs as widely from it, in short, 

 as a stiffened shirt-collar from the main-mast 

 of a three-decker ship. A farmer comes to the 

 chemist with some dust or bolus from a far- 



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