58 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



Ma 



bread, a potato and a beef-steak are fertilizers in an 

 organized form. "Bum these completely, and the wa- 

 ter, air and ashes into which they will be transformed 

 by combustion, are to all intents, and for all purposes 

 in nature, minerals. They will combine chemically 

 with metals and earths, and exist for indefinite centu- 

 ries as solid unchanging rocks. To make and pre- 

 serve manure, implies the skillful collection and hus- 

 banding of the elements of bread and meat, both in 

 their mineral and in their organized state, as in the 

 dung and urine of animals, in common vegetable mold, 

 in salts of lime, potash, silica, soda, magnesia, iron 

 and alumina. 



In order to collect and preserve the elements of hu- 

 man food and clothing to the best advantage, the 

 operator should have a clear idea of the natural pro- 

 cess by which both plants and animals groic, come to 

 maturity, die, and are dissolved into their original 

 elements, preparatory for a new organization. In a 

 study so wide as this, we can only serve as a guide- 

 board to point the way. Know then this truth, that 

 no animal from man down to the fish and worm, can 

 subsist on disorganized matter, like the gases, vapor 

 and ash of a loaf of bread, when entirely consumed 

 by fire, or fully decomposed by fermentation and rot- 

 ting. These elements of bread can only be re-or- 

 ganized by a living plant under the influence of 3olar 

 light, heat and electricity. From this it follows, that 

 plants are older on our planet than animals ; and that 

 if all vegetation were to cease for a few years, all ani- 

 mals must inevitably perish. Plants may have 

 flourished for ages on the globe before an insect or 

 molusca was created : but as all animals mineralize 

 their food, not completely, but in a degree, and can- 

 not live on the carbonic acid which they all form, it 

 follows that, without plants to decompound this car- 

 bonic acid, and reorganize its constituent atoms, to 

 serve again as food for animals, they would soon be- 

 come extinct, from the lack of nutriment. 



The works of God are full of interest. They are 

 unfolded in a peculiar manner before the vision of an 

 intelligent, reasoning farmer. He cannot fail to no- 

 tice the wonderful proclivity of all living things, 

 whether vegetable or animal, to multiply in number, 

 and gain, at the expense of the mineral kingdom, in 

 the aggregate weight of organized matter on our giv- 

 en area of land. It is the every day business of the 

 husbandman to organize the most useful plants and 

 animals out of the atoms which Providence has ap- 

 pointed for that purpose. Has God made provision 

 for the large increase of these through the instrumen- 

 tality of that talking, reasoning biped, on any little 

 sppt of the earth's surface, which by courtesy is called 

 a farm ? If a larger weight of plants and of animals, 

 can live on thy farm, kind reader, than it has at this 

 time, think for a moment, and tell me where thou wilt 

 get the food, the manure, to be organized into more 

 grass, grain, roots, wool, mutton, milk and beef? 

 These things have a market value. Providence fa- 

 vors their increase in thy hands ; but thou, strange 

 lump of contradictions, wilt not extract pure gold 

 from the subsoil and the atmosphere. Thou art re- 

 gardless of its loss from the vault of the privy, the 

 pig-stye — the barn yard in winter and the cow yard 

 in summer. Thy heart lusteth for more land, when 

 thou hast so much already, that no acre of it yields 

 two-thirds of its maximum. Thou hast not duly test- 

 ed the advantages of soiling cows, nor the benefit of 

 deep tilth, of close planting and seeding. Spires of 

 grass stand too far apart on thy pastures and on thy 



meadows. Some of these fields can be improved by 

 turning little rivulets over them for irrigation. Oth- 

 ers need draining, and a coat of caustic lime to sweet- 

 en the sour muck and neutralize the mineral acids. 

 Manure derived from cat-tails and bull-rushes is worth 

 something ; but that which clover and peas draw 

 from the earth is worth five times more, pound for 

 pound. One hundred pounds of rye harrowed into 

 the earth in a cornfield at the maturity of the crop, 

 has organized more than a ton of fertilizers by April, 

 to be plowed in, and feed a summer crop. For ewes 

 with lamb, or while nursing their offspiring, a mode- 

 rate allowance of green rye early in the spring, is 

 capital. Have valuable plants always growing the 

 year round, so far as you can, on every rod of land, to 

 feed domestic animals, unless it is thought best to 

 sell the crops. To make the most out of vegetable 

 vitality, it must ever be kept at work accumulating 

 manure, which should all be saved somewhere. A 

 pea can work wonders in the way of storing up fer- 

 tilizers in an available form. A carrot seed has a 

 gift in the same line ; but the little clover seed is a 

 perfect gem. Small as it is, the growing plant can 

 not live on air alone. It consumes a good deal of 

 sulphur and often requires gypsum to supply it. 



Good farmers at the South make great use of forest 

 leaves and leached ashes in their compost heaps. 

 These leaves are generally rich in potash and other 

 earthy salts as well as in organic matter. 



Suppose you raise sheep for their wool, meat and 

 tallow and sell them when three years old. The ma- 

 nure that can be made by a sheep in three years, with 

 the aid of good plants to draw minerals from the sub- 

 soil and gases from the atmosphere, will be about 

 equal to the production of food for two sheep at the 

 end of the term. Nothing is plainer than the fact 

 that, organized matter consumed and voided by a 

 sheep will greatly favor the growth of food for anoth- 

 er animal. And, although about 60 per cent, of the 

 matter eaten, escapes from the lungs in the form of 

 carbonic acid and vapor, and through the pores of the 

 skin by insensible perspiration, yet the other 40 per 

 cent, voided by the bowels and kidneys, adds more to 

 the soil in the way of mold than was probably con- 

 sumed in making the plants fed to the sheep. The 

 quantity of mold dissolved in organizing a crop, is 

 very unequal. It is a point in rural affairs, which 

 we have studied with some care. On another occa- 

 sion we will attempt to elucidate the laws which gov- 

 ern its consumption and increase, on both tilled and 

 untilled land. 



Rural industry is very generally spread over too 

 much surface, to be profitable in the highest degree. 

 This occasions a great waste of travel in man and 

 beast. It also leads to a bad system of husbandry by 

 robbing remote fields of their fertilizing atom?, not a 

 few of which cows and other domestic animals drop 

 in the highway. A farm being a sort of chemical 

 laboratory, it is miserable economy to have it ten 

 times larger than one has any use for. Less land, 

 and more money drawing 7 per cent, annual interest, 

 which will double the principal in 10J years, would 

 be an improvement in the circumstances of more than 

 one reader of this journal. 



Dairy Cows. — The excellency of a da-iry cow is 

 estimated by the quantity and quality of her milk. 

 The grand desideratum is to discover a breed alike 

 useful to the grazier, dairyman, and small farmer. 



