JVotices for a Young Farmer. xvji 



ate plants. Our sea coasts, on their dreary sandy or pebbly 

 beaches, might be filled with the Marine Pea; which will 

 grow, in defiance of the surges, spontaneously, after the first 

 seeding; and produce perpetual crops of nutriment, for horned 

 cattle, sheep, and swine, either on sea coasts, or the bor- 

 ders of lakes. The trifolium maritimum, (sea Trefoil ) would 

 grow luxuriantly in salt marshes ; and take the place of the 

 inferior vegetation now occupying them. Many more in- 

 stances, to show the principle, might be added. The Tussilago, 

 or Colts-foot, delights in meagre soils; and making them 

 rich, especially with dung, will kill it. it were to be wished, 

 that our wild garlick were thus vulnerable. Meagre soil, 

 of any texture, cannot equal that naturally fertile, in the pro- 

 duction of any plant; but manure operates with double effi- 

 cacy, on a plant in its proper soil. Nor is it intended to say, 

 that, in all cases, changing a plant from a worse to a better 

 soil, (avoiding extremes,) is otherwise than salutary ; for 

 some plants are thereby improved. But such plants must 

 not be those exclusively calculated for particular soils. Wheat 

 is, fortunately, a plant capable of being indigenated in any 

 soil or climate ; yet of this grain, there are species growing 

 better in some, than in other soils. There are wheats for 

 sand, and wheats for clay. The grasses (commonly so called,) 

 have varieties, strikingly adapted to appropriate soils j an 1 

 such peculiarities should be carefully studied. 



It is not intended to enter into the questions — what is the 

 food of plants ? and whether particular soils are more than 

 others, furnished with the pabulum for the plants natural to 

 them? and whether every plant requires specific food ; which 

 being exhausted, degeneracy or death ensues? The general 

 opinion seems to be, that all draw their nourishment out of a 

 common magazine, in the air and the earth ; the organs of 

 each being formed to draw the sustenance peculiar to it; and 

 most of this, from the air. Such questions are unsettled ; 

 various opinion's bring entertained concerning them. The 

 changes of timber and plants in our forests, were mentioned 

 as indications of nature, that our crops should be changed. 

 Most unwarrantable imputations have been cast on the jwriter 



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