12 Theory of .Agriculture. [Jan., 



composes all crenates and apocrenates and humates, and makes 

 ammoniacal combinations, which are powerful manures. Even 

 bog iron gives up its apocrenic and crenic acids. Hence, the 

 benefit of manures, and of alkaline carbonates on ferruginous 

 soils. Soils without organic matter never have been made to bear 

 perfect plants with fruit or seed, all statements to the contrary 

 notwithstanding. I repudiate, for I know by numerous trials, that 

 the experiments cannot be made, for fungi and masses will inva- 

 riably vitiate the experiment by their growth. I could not, in 

 any of my experiments, prevent green mosses from growing in 

 granular quartz, and forming a primary mould, nor could I pre- 

 vent some of the roots of the plants from decaying and forming 

 mould. Hence all experiments on this subject are futile. In pure 

 water, plants soon die. In apocrenate of potash, they live and do 

 well, and the color gradually disappears from the brown apocrenic 

 solution." 



The common experience of all experimenters, in regard to the 

 growth of fungi, in all places and under all circumstances, coin- 

 cide with the statements of Dr. Jackson. They plant themselves 

 upon the trunks of trees, living and dead, upon rocks exposed to 

 the sun, or in the shade, on the cold, inhospitable mountain top, 

 and in the mild and fertile valleys, stretching along its base; in 

 the deep, dark and damp mine, upon the roofs of our houses, and 

 in our cellars, and indeed everywhere where the atmosphere pen- 

 etrates, they are seen, first in a light green film upon the surface, 

 then in the minute branching form of miniature trees and forests, 

 and finally they become a thick green matting of evergreen moss; 

 or it may be only a dry foliaceous covering of lichen, fit for the 

 food of the reindeer and other herbiverous quadrupeds. They are 

 every where the harbingers of a more vigorous vegetation. Burn 

 your soil, drench it with acids, or make an artificial one of the 

 hard, grinning quartz or granite, and the moss and lichen will 

 seize upon it as their domain, and plant their rootlets upon its 

 surface, and bring forth their generations. Such is their hold 

 upon life that we may dry them till they crisp and break in our 

 hands, or steep them for months, still they bear it, and spring 



