278 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



Dec. 



combined with one of hydrogen, form in water, muri- 

 atic acid, or hydro-chloric acid, as it is now more com- 

 monly called. As a class of minerals, the chlorides 

 or muriates are very soluble, like the chloride of so- 

 dium, or common salt. They do not abound in soils. 

 Common salt has been used as a fertilizer some three 

 thousand years — both soda and chlorine entering in- 

 to the composition of all or nearly all crops. Most 

 quadrupeds are extremely fond of salt; and all civil- 

 ized people season their daily food with it. It is cu- 

 rious that potatoes and wheat cannot be salted enough 

 while growing: and that no degree of salting a fat- 

 ting steer will suffice, so that a little added to a fresh 

 6teak will not be an improvement. "Ye are the salt 

 of the earth," has not less an agricultural, than a 

 moral meaning. 



With regard to the value of lime, magnesia, potash, 

 soda, and iron, in organising cultivated plants, per- 

 haps nothing need be said. I have never analyzed a 

 soil that lacked iron: like silica, iron is not always in 

 a soluble and available form. The practical farmer 

 should understand, that such constituents of plants as 

 are always soluble, a few year's tillage and fair 

 drainage render scarce; and such as are ordinarily in- 

 soluble, without the aid of decomposing mould or 

 vegetables, cease in a great degree to yield their nu- 

 tritive atoms to famishing crops. Bear in mind that 

 between forty and fifty cubic inches of water fall on 

 every square inch of surface in the course of twelve 

 months. If the ground has been cultivated, and really 

 contains the food of plants in a soluble condition, this 

 water will of course dissolve alike the organic and 

 inorganic elements of vegetables. I have frequently 

 washed from ten to fifty pounds of soil in pure rain 

 water as it falls from the clouds, and then filtered and 

 evaporated the water to see what substances were 

 held in solution. I have never failed to get both 

 combustible and incombustible elements, and often 

 nearly equal parts of each. By leaching fifty pounds 

 of soil a few weeks with warm rain water, and then 

 analyzing the matter dissolved out, one can judge 

 with some confidence of its defects and productive- 

 ness. 



In studying the various processed by which the 

 fertility of a cultivated field becomes impaired, I have 

 been led to believe that much depends on the propor- 

 tion of the water that evaporates on the earth where 

 it falls, and that which runs off, either on the surface 

 or under it, into springs and rivulet'', to form creeks 

 and rivers. Deeply tilled land will absorb twice as 

 much rain water as shallow tilled will; and the former 

 will retain twice as much to carry the crop through 

 a drouth, for evaporation at the surface of its numer- 

 ous leaves, as will the latter. But most of the culti- 

 vated lands in the United States are neither tilled 

 deeply, nor uniformly covered with growing vegeta- 

 tion, to absorb and fix in its tissues the dissolved food 

 of plants. 



The more a soil is stirred with the hoe, cultivator, 

 or plow, the faster the elements of crops are set free 

 by chemical action, and will be lost by solar evapora- 

 tion, washing and leaching, if such elements are not 

 taken up by growing plants and retained in them. 

 Berzelius found two organic acids in clear spring 

 water, to which he gave the names of "crenic," and 

 "apocrenic," from krene, the Greek for a "spring." 

 River water always contains both the organic and 

 inorganic food of plants. The quantity of the fertil- 

 izing atoms which is wasted in the planting States, 

 is infinitely larger than one man in a thousand ever 



suspects. As a similar waste prevails at the North, 

 only much less in extent, I desire to give a clear ex- 

 position of my views on this, the practical part of my 

 theme. 



Although both cotton and corn are planted early, 

 and often gathered late at the South, yet cotton and 

 corn plants do not gain much in weight beyond four 

 months for the former and three months for the latter. 

 During the first four or five weeks after the seeds 

 germinate, the young plants are too small to imbibe 

 any considerable quantity of nutritive matter of any 

 kind, from the soil. As they approach maturity, they 

 gain less and less in weight, and of course abstract 

 less and less fertilizing matter from the earth or at- 

 mosphere. During the past season I have watched 

 with lively interest, the organization or growth of 

 corn which yielded from five up to fifty bushels per 

 acre. If I express the opinion that a crop of five 

 bushels exhausted the soil about as much as one of 

 fifty, some will esteem the remark about as sensible 

 as to say that five sheep will eat as much food as fiftv. 

 The cases are not parallel. If a crop of corn, equal 

 to the production of five bushels per acre, does not 

 exhaust the soil as much as it would if ten times 

 larger, the only reason that can be assigned is, that 

 the elements of corn plants are in truth not present 

 in the sterile earth, to be removed. On poor land it 

 is found necessary to give each stalk three times 

 more surface of earth to imbibe nourishment from, 

 than on good land. When there is but a single plant 

 to twenty-four square feet of surface, and that plant 

 a very small one, my impression is that even during 

 the period when it grows the fastest, it fails to take 

 in at its few small roots, more than a third of the 

 available atoms evolved by the decay of the organic 

 and the solution of earthy food of the plant, within 

 the square which it occupies. I will not say that all 

 the gases and earthy salts derived from rotting mould 

 and vegetables, and from dissolved lime, potash, soda 

 and magnesia, which fail to enter the corn plant, are 

 lost. But this I will say, that I see no reason to 

 doubt the loss of most of these volatile and liquid 

 atoms. I would about as soon have a field cropped 

 ten years, and all the corn or cotton entirely removed, 

 root and branch, as to have it well plowed and hoed 

 ten years, and no vegetable whatever premitted to or- 

 ganize carbon, nitrogen, and the elements of water, 

 and the minerals which form the ashe.s of corn, cotton, 

 and wheat, in the field. 



There are some seven millions of acres planted in 

 cotton in the United States, every year. As the 

 plant is little used to feed domestic animal?, and 

 most of its seeds are returned, after rotting, as ma- 

 nure, no crop should injure the soil so little. But the 

 clean culture, and long tillage which it demands, 

 make it the most exhausting crop that is grown in 

 the Southern States. As now cultivated, it wastes 

 three times more food than it eats. And such is my 

 judgment in regard to not a little of the corn and to- 

 bacco culture which I have seen. I come now to the 

 consideration of preventives and remedies. 



To save from waste and loss the constituents of 

 bread and meat, as they are eliminated by tillage, 

 they should be immediately organized in some living 

 vegetable. This is the process employed by Nature 

 to renovate soils that have been impoverished by un- 

 wise cultivation, or by other means. It is the only 

 way in which a soil can be made to increase in fer- 

 tility, without adding fertilizers from elsewhere to it. 

 Much has been written on the subject of renovating 



