70 



GENESEE FARMER. 



May, 1845 



a week while working against the purposes of 

 nature. 



It is not far from the truth to say, that 400,000 of 

 the 700,000 children now attending our common 

 schools, are destined to become practical operatives 

 in the great art of making something into grain, 

 grass, roots, milk, butter, cheese, wool, fat, lean 

 meat, bone, or some of the numerous other products 

 of rural labor. Jf'liere that something can be found, 

 and hoic the raw materials of all cultivated plants 

 should be combined so as to give the largest return 

 for any given amount of capital and manual toil, are 

 problems in practical husbandry, which science alone 

 can solve. 



If the ashes obtained by burning a ripe wheat, rye, 

 oat, corn, barley, or timothy plant, be analyzed, not 

 far fi'om 80 per cent, will be found to be silica, or 

 common flint sand. This silica is an indispensable 

 ingredient in the above-named crops ; and yet, not 

 one particle of this mineral can enter the root of any 

 plant except it be dissolved in water. Now, of all 

 earthy substances, flinl sand is the most insoluble. 

 Indeed, you may boil it for hours in aqua fortis, sul- 

 phuric or muriatic acid, without dissolving it. How, 

 then, is the practical farmer to dissolve this mineral, 

 which, more than all others, forms the hone neces- 

 sary to give strength to the stems of his grain, that 

 they may hold up, without falling, the load of ripe 

 seed in the ears ? 



Chemically speaking, silica is an acid, and will 

 unite with a large dose of the two alkalies, potash 

 and soda, and form a soluble silicate of those bases. 



This explanation reveals the reason why the alka- 

 lies in wood ashes are so valuable as fertilizers on 

 sandy soils. On comparing the analyses of maple, 

 beech, and oak ashes with those obtained from cereal 

 plants, there will be found a striking similarity in 

 their respective constituents. 



Next to clay, sand, and potash — lime, soda, phos- 

 phorus, sulphur, chlorine, and iron,^are the most im- 

 portant minerals found in cultivated plants. To pre- 

 pare these ingredients for use, the following is a 

 cheap and easy process : 



Take ten bushels of newly-slacked lime — i.e., ten 

 before it is slacked — and mix it thoroughly with 20 

 bushels of loam or vegetable mould. Add to the 

 heap five bushels of common salt and an equal 

 amount of plaster of Paris. Moisten till the mass 

 is like damp earth. 



The plaster will furnish sulphur, and the common 

 salt will yield both soda and chlorine. The latter 

 will leave the sodium and unite with the caustic 

 lime, forminjT a soluble salt, called the chloride of 

 calcium. The sodium being first converted into soda, 

 will then combine with the carbonic acid from the 

 air and organized matter in the vegetable mould, and 

 form a precious alkahne salt, which will dissolve 

 common sand. This compound still lacks phospho- 

 rus and iron. Ground bones furnish the former, and 

 copperas the latter mineral. If one can get the 

 liquid excretions of domestic animals, or of the hu- 

 man species, and saturate the compost heap with 

 this compound of ammonia, phosphoric acid, and of 

 other valuable matters derived from plants, the ferti- 

 lizing properties of this artificial manure will be 

 greatly increased. 



There is no branch of business in which the sci- 

 ences of geology, chemistry, and of vegetable and 

 animal physiology, are so useful to man, as they are 

 to the practical husbandman. The term science is 

 but another name for knowledge. It is, however, 



usually limited in connection with natural phenome- 

 na, to the systematic investigation of the laws of 

 nature. Of all men, the practical faimeris most in- 

 terested in understanding and obeying these wise 

 and salutary laws. 



The fact is susceptible of demonstration, that 

 from a general ignorance of these laws,, we have 

 wasted in the state of New York, within the last 

 twenty-fJA-e years, the indispensable ingredients that 

 go to form both bread and milk for our children, 

 which, if placed in New York or Boston markets, 

 would sell for one hundred millions of dollars. 



The guano imported into Great Britain last year 

 sold for t!4,000,000. It is retailed in Western New 

 York by an exchange of four pounds of flour for one 

 of guano. 



To make an acre of wheat that will yield twenty 

 bushels, the plants must ha^e 12 pounds of phospho- 

 rus. To purchase that amount of a substance, 

 which forms one of the constituents of the human 

 brain, at a druggist's shop, will cost $24. 



The fact is notorious, that there are thousands, if 

 not millions of acres in this state, which once bore 

 20 bushels of good wheat per acre, that now yield 

 not more than ten bushels. To make our twelve 

 millions of bushels of wheat a year, we annually 

 consume about seven millions of pounds of phospho- 

 rus. It is the phosphate of lime contained in grass 

 and hay, derived from the earth, out of which all 

 our domestic animals form the solid earthy portion of 

 their bones. At present prices, the phosphorus and 

 ammonia annually thrown away in the solid and li- 

 quid excretions of man and his domestic animals, are 

 worth some $20,000,000. 



A cargo of guano — phosphorus and concentrated 

 nitrogen, derived from the fish on which sea-fowls 

 feed — arrived in New York a few days since, which 

 will sell at some $60,000 ! What consummate fol- 

 ly, to throw away the raw materials which form our 

 daily bread ! 



In a work just published in this country, M. Bous- 

 singault states, that he has seen fields on the table 

 lands of the Andes which have produced excellent 

 crops of wheat annually, for 200 years. Guano is 

 the fertilizer used on these fields. 



Recent experiments in Scotland have demonstra- 

 ted the practicability of growing 44 bushels of 

 wheat on an acre having only 1 \ per cent, of organ- 

 ized matter in the soil. It must contain, however, 

 to a limited extent, each of the 14 simple elemen- 

 tary substances which form a wheat plant. 



It is well known, that if a bin of corn be moisten- 

 ed, it will heat, and grow or rot. In the process of 

 sprouting, a seed first imbibes some portion of the 

 vital gas which surrounds it, which, uniting with the 

 carbon in the starch, forms carbonic acid, and evolves 

 heat. When starch thus loses one portion of its 

 carbon, it is changed into a kind of sugar, making, 

 as is well known, sweet bread from wheat a little 

 grown. If a grain of ,whcat be surrounded by a 

 little waxy clay, only a half-inch in diameter, it will 

 not sprout, because oxygen gas cannot penetrate the 

 compact earth. By sowing grain in wet weather, 

 so that the harrow covers the seed with mud, thou- 

 sands of bushels are lost. 



It is a matter of great practical importance to 

 know how to develop a large, vigorous growth of 

 roots. On a poor soil, this can only be done by tho 

 aid of science. Deep plowing, and a thorough pul- 

 verizing of the soil, are indispensable to accomplish 

 this object. 



