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THE FARMERS' CABINET, 



DEVOTED TO AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE AND RURAL ECONOMY. 



Vol. II.— No. 18. 



July 16, 1S38. 



[IVliole No. 43, 



PUBLISHED BY JOHN LIBBY, 

 No. 4:5 North Sixth Street, Philadelphia, 



AT ONE DOLLAR PER TEAR. 



PETER B. PORTER, 97 MARKET ST., 



IVilmington, Del. 



The Productive Poivers of Nature. 



The powers of nature to create vegetable 

 productions appear never to diminish ; the 

 process goes on year after year with increas' 

 ing energy, and brings forth an increase of 

 vegetable matter to be again decomposed and 

 returned to the soil. This is the natural pro- 

 cess by which the decomposing vegetable 

 matter which we find in the soil is formed 

 and there has been a continual succession of 

 production, decay, and reproduction, of vege^ 

 table matter going on ever since nature first 

 sprung into existence, producing vegetables 

 which, when dead, are decomposed into the 

 elements ofwhich they were originally formed. 



No loss is sustained by the decomposition 

 of vegetable or animal matter in the soil ; all 

 is reduced to the first elements of plants, 

 which give fresh energy to vegetation by again 

 entering into vegetable composition. 



Thus the process of the growth and decay 

 of vegetable matter goes on in a continual 

 succession, and the decay of one crop becomes 

 the nourishment of the next. 



When nature is left to herself, the accu- 

 mulation of decomposing vegetable matter on 

 the surface becomes great; and if the soil is 

 not possessed of the property of hastening their 

 decay, the vegetable matter is merely in- 

 creased on the soil, without adding to its pro- 

 ductive powers. 



On a careful examination, we think, it will 

 be found that the production of vegetables 

 never exhausts any soil : the yearly growth 

 of grass, with its decay, adds yearly to its pro- 



Cab.— Vol. II— No. 18. 



ductiveness; and even a plentiful crop of 

 weeds, when allowed to decay on the land 

 which produced them, has the same effect : 

 and thus it is, that land, which has been worn 

 out by cross cropping, is by slovenly farmers 

 left for nature to improve. 



When the natural pasture is consumed by 

 stock it is converted into animal food for man : 

 and the excrement of the stock being left on 

 the soil forms a rich decomposing animal ma- 

 nure, which gives to the soil increased ener- 

 gy to reproduce an increase of vegetable food 

 for an additional quantity of stock. 



Pasture land is full of vegetable fibre, from 

 the surface down as low as the roots of plants 

 descend. Some are the recent roots of grasses, 

 others are those of every stage of decomposi- 

 tion. In arable land scarcely any vegetable 

 fibre is to be found : this circumstance should 

 teach us, that to form a good pasture, we 

 should fill the soil with vegetable fibre as a 

 manure, where we convert arable into pasture 

 land. 



The very small proportion of vegetable mat- 

 ter which is contained in the most productive 

 arable soils, would almost seem to indicate 

 that their richness does not depend on the de- 

 composing vegetable matter, but on some- 

 thing else; for if all the straw or refuse of 

 the crops it produced, was returned to it after 

 it had passed through the stomach of some 

 animal, this would scarcely be equal to one- 

 third of what the earth produced. 



A judicious succession of crops, and a profit- 

 able consumption of the produce by sheep on 

 the ground, return to the soil such a quantitj- 

 of manure as to give an additional means of 

 increasing its prof/uctiveness. 



"Water is necessary to the growth of pla?it&\ 

 It is essential to the juices or extract of vege- 

 table matter which they contain, and unless 

 353 



