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Agricultural Production impossible without Manure. Vol. VI. 



D. But the yoke is so much cheaper than 

 the collar and harness. 



C. True, and I am willing that you should 

 debit every crop which you raise by their 

 means, with an extra two cents per acre — 

 that being, I calculate, about the extra ex- 

 pense incurred, and which would cover it. 



D. Then, it is so much more labour and 

 trouble to gear up with the collars and har- 

 ness than with the yoke, that I guess I shall 

 go on as I am. 



C. Yes, that is exactly the conclusion to 

 which I expected we should arrive, for to that 

 point have all the arguments that I have 

 heard, come at last ; and, but for the shame 

 of it, it would no doubt form the first objec- 

 jection to the substitution of the collar for the 

 yoke. ViR. 



Agricnitural Production Impossible 

 without Manure. 



The first care of a man, who devotes his 

 capital in obtaining productions of the earth, 

 is that the earth should have fecundity, that 

 is to say, that it should be fit for the produc- 

 tion of plants. 



Plants, like animals, are beings who have 

 life, who are possessed of organs and vessels, 

 in which circulates a fluid, and which, aided 

 by an appropriate nourishment, develope an 

 organic mass, in a given time. 



Of two kinds of earth, the most fruitful will 

 be that, which in the same time will have 

 produced the most considerable weight of or- 

 ganic mass, reduced to a dry state; and the 

 production will be as much more advantage- 

 ous to the cultivator, as it will be sought for, 

 and of a higher price. 



Plants, to accomplish their life, to arrive to 

 the state of being organic, have absolutely 

 need of manure, the result of the decomposi- 

 tion of other vegetable, or animal, organic 

 matter spread upon the surface of the earth. 

 An organic body can be born only of the ele- 

 ments of organic substances. 



These matters, most generally of a vege- 

 table nature, have been also of plants, and 

 have owed being obtained, to cultivation; 

 therefore it is truth to say, that to obtain of 

 the earth productions of a certain weight, it 

 is necessary, previously to dispose in its bosom 

 the remains of other plants having had life 

 also; and often it happens, that the weight 

 of the matter to be converted into manure, 

 ought to be equal to that of the plant to be 

 obtained ; in other terms, when one wishes to 

 obtain from a field, which has no trace of 

 manure, a production of given weight, it is 

 necessary to carry and place in this field other 

 organic matters, produced elsewhere, and of 

 an equal weight; and if this obtained produc- 

 tion is carried entirely out of the field and 



sold, it will be necessary, if one wishes to 

 obtain of it still a like production, to carry 

 again into this field the same weight of or- 

 ganic matter obtained by cultivation upon 

 another field. 



All manure put into the earth ought to be 

 in a state of humus, soluble in water, so that 

 the juices of plants can seize upon it and ap- 

 propriate it to themselves. Manure consists 

 of all the elements of vegetable matter. As 

 soon as it is soluble, the roots absorb it and 

 communicate it to the interior organs of the 

 plant which secretes it in the parts of which 

 it has need to develope itself. 



Thus the more a piece of land is mixed 

 with soluble manure, the more it produces 

 plants and vegetable qualifications; only the 

 consumption of the manure is not the same. 



There are plants, which, although impart- 

 ing to the earth a part of their nourishment 

 by the means of their roots sunk into the 

 earth, appropriate to themselves also a great 

 quantity of atmospheric substances by means 

 of their leaves, their aerial roots, and have, 

 besides, this great advantage, that even when 

 they are carried out of the field, they have 

 there still, by means of their stubble, and of 

 their numerous fleshy roots, as much, and 

 sometimes more, organic matter than they 

 have consumed for their growth. If one 

 leaves them in the field, and covers, as it 

 sometimes happens, the entire body of the 

 plant in the earth, they recover the juices 

 that it has furnished, and will give more in 

 equivalent richness of nutritive principles, 

 than the hidden plants had drawn from the 

 atmosphere. 



It is owing to this admirable property of 

 certain plants to produce more matter than 

 they absorb of humus from the earth, that it 

 is possible to maintain the fertility of a piece 

 of ground in rendering to it only a part of 

 that which it has produced, that is to say, in 

 directing a portion to indemnify itself of its 

 expense and trouble. 



If plants live only by the humus spread 

 upon the earth, we should be obliged to re- 

 place the production which we have not con- 

 verted into manure, by a proportionate quan- 

 tity of vegetables cultivated in another piece 

 of land ; and if it was thus, the strength of 

 vegetation would diminish little by little, and 

 the money consecrated to the cultivation of 

 the soil would be lost. 



Some plants, with large leaves, which do 

 not appertain to the leguminous family, have 

 some of their properties, those which deprive 

 the soil of less of the humus than it contains, 

 and impart more new humus by their re- 

 mains, are those which possess these proper- 

 ties in the highest degree. 



We can now divide the plants into four 

 classes, with respect to the more or less in- 



