96 



FARMERS' REGISTER 



[No. 2 



"The greater part of improving substances are cal- 

 careous compounds. Their effect is decided on all 

 soils which do not contain lime, and we shall see that 

 three-fourths, perhaps, of the lands of France are in 

 that state. Soils not calcareous, whatever may be the 

 culture, and whatever may be the quantity of manure 

 lavished on them, are not suitable for all products, are 

 often cold and moist, and are covered with weeds. 

 Calcareous manures, by giving the lime that is want- 

 ing in such soils, complete their advantages, renderthe 

 tilFage more easy, destroy the weeds, and fit the soil 

 for all products." 



"These improving substances have been called 

 stimulants; they have been thus designated because it 

 was believed that their effect consisted only in stimu- 

 lating the soil and the plants. This designation is 

 faulty, because it would place these substances in a 

 false point of view. It would make it seem that they 

 brought nothing to the soil nor to plants, and yet their 

 principal effect is to give to both, principles which are 

 wanting." 



Thus the main effect of calcareous manures proceeds 

 from their giving on the one hand, to the soil the cal- 

 careous principle which it does not contain, antl which 

 is necessary to develope its full action on the atmos- 

 phere; and on the other hand, to vegetables,the quanti- 

 ty which they require of this principle, for their frame 

 work, and for their intimate constitution. It would 

 then be a better definition than that above, to say that 

 to improve the soil, is to give to it the principles which 

 it requires, and does not contain." — Puvis. 



****** 



"In the neighborhood of great cities, alimentary 

 manures being furnished on good terms, may well 

 vivify the soil; but animal manures cannot suffice but 

 in a few situations and of small extent, and in every 

 country where tillage is highly prosperous, improving 

 manures are in use. The department of the north 

 (France,) Belgium, and England owe to them in a 

 great measure their prosperity. The department of 

 the north (which is, of all Europe, the country where 

 agriculture is best practised and the most productive,) 

 spends every year upon two-thirds of its soil a million 

 of francs in lime, marl, ashes of peat and bituminous 

 coal, and it is principally to these agents, and not to 

 the quality of the soil, that the superiority of its pro- 

 duction isowing. The best of its soil makes part of 

 the same basin, is of the same formation and same 

 quality as a great part of Artois and Picardy, of which 

 the products are scarcely equal to half the rate of the 

 north. Neither is it the quantity of meadow land 

 which causes its superiority; that makes the fifth part 

 of its extent, and Lille, the best Arrondissement, has 

 scarcely a twentieth of its surface in meadow: 

 Avesne the worst of all, has one-third. Nor can any 

 great additional value be attributed to the artificial 

 meadows, since they are not met with except in the 

 twenty-sixth part of the whole space. Neither can 

 this honor be due to the suppression of naked fallows, 

 since in this country of pattern husbandry, they yet 

 take up one-sixth of the ploughed land, every year. 

 Finally the Flemings have but one head of large cattle 

 to every two hectares, a proportion exceeded in a great 

 part of France. Their great products are due to their 

 excellent economy in the use of manures, to the assid- 

 uous labor of the farmers, to courses of crops well ar- 

 ranged, but above all, we think, to the improvers of 

 the soil, which they join to their alimentary manures. 

 Two-thirds of their land receive these regularly: and 

 it is to the reci[)rocal action of these agents of melio- 

 ration that appears to be due the uninterrupted succes- 

 sion of fecundity, which astonishes all those who are 

 not accustomed continually to see the products of this 

 region." — Fums. 



The agriculture of adjacent parts of Belgium is 

 even more instructive as an example. Those parts 

 of that rich country which are now most remarka- 



ble for fertility, as for instance the Pays de Waes, 

 were originally barren hills of blowing sand. 

 They now yield a greater product than any other 

 part of Europe. Great industry and labor iiave 

 no doubt been expended in obtaining andapplymg 

 putrescent manures, and in this region the clover 

 husbandry had its rise; but with ail this, no per- 

 manent fertility could have been given without the 

 use of lime, and those substances which contain 

 its compounds. At present a light Iriable mould, 

 of greater depth than can be reached by the 

 plough, and which is therelbre occasionally trench- 

 ed by the spade, covers the whole of the ancient 

 dunes, and the whole country presents an aspect, 

 of which no part of ours can even furnish an idea, 

 with the exception of the garden grounds of the 

 Shakers at Lebanon. 



We fully concur with tiie opinion of M. Puvia 

 in respect to the importance of earlhy and saline 

 matter, notonly as tbrming a basis of |3roper char- 

 acter to support the plant, but as itself forming an 

 essential part of the Ibod. We on the other hand 

 cannot but express our dissent from the opinion, 

 which deriv(^s the other elements necessary to 

 growth of plants wholly from the atmosphere. If 

 he mean indirectly, through the intervention of 

 the soil, he is to a certain extent right, for most of 

 the water which is the vehicle of all their nutri- 

 ment, yields at least one of their essential ele- 

 ments, and is itself incorporated with the plants, 

 is derived from the atmosphere in the shape of 

 rain and dew. But the gases it dissolves and car- 

 ries with it, and which yield the carbon and part 

 of the hydrogen of plants, are all derived li'om 

 the decomposition of" organic matter in the soil it- 

 self When therelbre we can find, in the absorp- 

 tion of water by the roots — its ascent in the form 

 of sap — its elaboration in the leaves, where so far 

 fi-om an absorption fi'om the atmosphere taking 

 place, oxygen is evolved — in the subsequent des- 

 cent of the altered sap in the form of gum. resin, 

 &c. a sulTicient reason lor the supply of the parts 

 M. Puvis seeks in the atmosphere — we are com- 

 pelled to dissent from his conclusion. There is 

 one curious fact in connexion with this suiiject, 

 that we have never seen mentioned. It is obvious 

 that while lands still retain a large quantity of ve- 

 getable matter, arising as it may. from their hav- 

 ing been for ages in the state of forest, little bene- 

 fit is to be hoped from putrescent manures, while 

 there may be earthy substances essential to the 

 growth of particular plants, which the .soil does 

 not contain. In such a case earthy manures are 

 likely to be extremely serviceable. 



The practical farmer in some parts of our coun- 

 try, finding that in a new soil, putrescent manures 

 injure his crops, carts them out upon frozen rivers, 

 in order that they may be carried away when the 

 streams thaw. He thus loses all recollection of 

 the European tradition of the necessity of re- 

 storing vegetable or animal matter to the soil, and 

 continues a cultivation growing yearly more ex- 

 hausting, until his land will no longer aHbrd him 

 a subsistence. His successor coming from a 

 longer settled district, or from an European coun- 

 try, trusts wholly to putrescent manures, and ia 

 astonished that they often fail in their effects; but 

 that an inert earlhy matter should in some cases 

 be a substitute for organic manure, and in others 

 should be absolutely necessaiy to make it efficient, 

 he will not believe, and laughs at the idea of cart- 



