360 



THE FARMERS' REGISTER. 



crop to the present impoverished sifuaiion of the 

 land. The change therefore, from the hard wood 

 to the soft, is not properly an alternation, it is 

 merely a change brought about by ilie peculiarity 

 of ihe case. 11 I have a piece of land so poor 

 that It will not produce turnips, and I plant peas 

 there, is this an alternation? No one will pre- 

 tend that it is. No more can that be regarded 

 as an alternation, when nature, finding that her 

 land will not produce the lormei crop, plants a 

 diHerent one on it. 



Having now disposed of the case on which the 

 editor seems to rely with so much confidence, 

 I go a step further and say, that nature unviolaied, 

 but lei alone in her own free course, never alter- 

 nates her crops. Go to some sequestered spot 

 where man has never been, if such a spot can 

 be found, and where violence of no other kind, 

 by tempest, by flood, nor by fire, has ever been 

 inflicted, and the forest which was of oak, a 

 thousand years ago, is a forest of oak still. I 

 insist upon it, that no ins'ance can be adduced, 

 in which nature, left to her own free course, has 

 been known to alternate an oak for a pine, or a pine 

 for an oak. Such changes do constamly occur 

 where man has been at work, but then the handy 

 work of man has been Ihe cause of it. 



Furthermore, if the editor will favor me with 

 a visit, (I am too busy at this lime to visit him,) 

 I will show him, what it seems is a strange sight 

 in his section of country, and I suppose will be 

 equally strange to his associate, Mr. Peyton, also, 

 and that is not one young oak, but great multi- 

 tudes o! them, growing from Ihe decaying slumps 

 of the parent tree, and nourished by what I call 

 the humus of the same. It seems that no such 

 thing ever occurs in the editor's country; but there, 

 when a tree dies in the natural way, or is uprooted 

 by the storm, or destroyed by fire or inundation, 

 it is succeeded by a tree of different order. Even 

 the long-leafed pine, or the short-leafed pine, is 

 succeeded by the old-field pine — a tree ofdifTerent 

 order. Novv here, I assure the editor that I wit- 

 ness the fact as stated above, and I venture to 

 assert that it will be found to exist in a great many 

 other places. Changes of this character, I admit, 

 do often take place, but rarely, if ever, except 

 where a change has been eflected in the condition 

 of the land. Let the land remain the same, and 

 leave nature to work in her own way, and Ihe 

 forest, which is her main and final crop, will re- 

 main the same. If under these circumstances 

 the oak dies, another oak will spring up from the 

 slump to supply its place. 



I will also mention that along the fence which 

 divides my neighbor's land from mine there is a 

 line of locusts planted. These locusts send their 

 roots to a considerable distance into my field, and 

 thus I am plagued every year in grubbinir up the 

 young sprouts which issue from them. There is 

 also an Otaheitan mulberry standing in the corner 

 of my yard, (I wish it was somewhere else,) which 

 has extended its roots into the garden and the ad- 

 joining field ; and here also, I have no little trouble 

 in keeping down the young shoots. It is also no- 

 torious, that the aspen is remarkable for covering 

 the whole space occupied by its roots with a mul- 

 titude of young aspens. But I shall be told — 

 these all proceed from the roots. I know it ; but 

 1 ask, in my turn — why do not these roots so ex- 

 haust the peculiar ingredients fitted for the tree, 



as to render the land incapable of rearing the 

 same? II in these cases the locust was cut down, 

 would a mulberry spring up 7 Or i( the mulberry 

 were cut down, would an aspen take its place? 

 Or if the aspen were removed would a pine make 

 its appearance 7 



But /am exhausted, though my subject is not. 

 This business of meeting two such formidable 

 antagonists at once, though in separate order, ia 

 hard work. I must, however, say something 

 about the admirable economy of nature in com- 

 passing her main object. I have elsewhere staled, 

 I think in the piece commented on, that nature 

 has but one want, and that is rich lands. All her 

 efll'orts seem to tend to this one point. She ab- 

 hors the idea that there should be a barren or 

 unproductive spot in any part of her vast farm. 

 We have seen that she will even take the naked 

 rock, and first clothe it with verdure, and then 

 plant the grand forest tree there. And how does 

 she effect this 7 It is simply by husbanding all 

 her resources, and then, with an admirable skill, 

 turning ihera to the best account. Nature never 

 wastes any thing. Not a weed, not a leaf, not 

 even a bit of moss is thrown away by her. In 

 her protZudions, also, we see this wonderful skill 

 displayed. She produces but little fruit, for she 

 has no use lor it. Whilst this is the case, it ii 

 wonderful what a multitude of berries ornament 

 the plants, Ihe shrubs and the small trees ofnature. 

 For these she has a use, and that is to feed the 

 immense numbers of her beaniilul birds. But 

 man can gather ten times as much fruit from one 

 of his small trees, as can be gathered from one 

 of nature's huge oaks. But il nature be deficient 

 in the production of fruit, she is by no means 

 deficient in providing the means by which she 

 may enrich her lands. If, therefore, the oak pro- 

 duce but few acorns, it produces a large crop of 

 leaves; acorns also often fail, but leaves never. 



The above may perhaps be regarded as mere 

 fancy. Not so. I have a distinct otject instat- 

 ing it, and that is to illustrate liiriher what I have 

 said about that deadly warfare which nature is 

 carrying on upon the cultivation of man. She 

 regards the whole world as her property. She 

 claims every acre, every inch of the land as her 

 own. Her main, her constant object, an object 

 which she has pursued for thousands of years 

 with the most untiring perseverance, is to make 

 every foot of the land rich. This she does by 

 taking off nothing, but restoring ihe whole pro- 

 duct, weed?, grass, leaves, to the land. Now the 

 very tendency and policy of cultivation is to 

 defeat nature in this her favorite object, and this, 

 in my opinion, is the cause of that deadly grudge 

 which she owes to man. 



This then is my theory of vegetable physio- 

 logy. And novv, AJr. Editor, what think you of it"? 

 I did not learn it li-om Macaire Princep, nor De 

 Candolle, nor Liebig. I left these gentlemen, 

 you recollect, some time ago, discussing with your 

 worthy associate about a second crop of beans 

 refusing to grow in water. / am, for my part, 

 much more surprised, that the first grew, than 

 that the second did not. However, it was a grave 

 matter among them. One started it, a second 

 revived it, and the third modified it a little. If 

 your associate can leave these gentlemen for a 

 moment, I will say to you singly or jointly, that 

 if you choose lo leave this discussion here, I ana 



