ao4 



;the gekesee farmek. 



Why our friend the Professor should object to 

 our using a word in the same sense as he himself 

 uses it, we are somewhat at a loss to determine. 

 Perhaps since he wrote the article we have quoted, 

 he has discovered a better word. If he has, we 

 should be happy to adopt it. 



(o) This appears to us a very poor argmnent. 

 The assertion that cereal plants destroy ammonia, 

 rests on the most careful, extensive, prolonged and 

 systematic series of experiments that have ever 

 been made in any country or in any age. But Dr. 

 Lee does not credit it. Why ? Because it " makes 

 nature not friendly, but strangely hostile to the en- 

 during growth of all our bread-forming plants." 

 For the same reason, the Professor might deny the 

 existence of "thorns and thistles," of the wheat- 

 midge, or the pear-blight. " In the sweat of thy 

 face shalt thou eat bread." To gi-ow "bread- 

 forming plants" is not an easy task. "Nature" is 

 not, at first sight^ " friendly" to it. The soil does 

 not throw up wheat as readily as it throws up weeds. 

 But the means necessary to destroy the weeds, pul- 

 verizes the soil and renders it more fertile, and the 

 wheat-midge will make us underdrain and enrich 

 our lands. Nature is only apparently, not really 

 " hostile." " The foolishness of God is wiser than 

 man." Those laws which appear foolish and " hos- 

 tile" are infinitely wise and " friendly." Substan- 

 ces which contain nitrogen, when left exposed to 

 the air, rapidly decompose and give olf gases which, 

 more than all others, are injurious to animal life. 

 If nature was friendly to the growth of bread- 

 forming plants — if they did not require a greater 

 supply of nitrogen than the atmosphere could sup- 

 ply — where would be the inducement to collect 

 and preserve these substances ? 



Again, this unfriendly law prevents any one gen- 

 eration from exhausting the soil of the elements of 

 plants. To grow large crops of bread-forming 

 plants, we require in the soil a large quantity of 

 ammonia ; but there is no natural way of furnish- 

 inn- ammonia, which does not at the same time fur- 

 nish a proportionate quantity of all the other in- 

 gr-edients of plants. Slovenly and careless farmers 

 impoverish their land, but they can not exhaust it. 

 A few years of judicious management will restore 

 it to its original fertility. This talk about the farm- 

 ers of the United States destroying " three hundred 

 million dollars" worth of the ingredients of plants 

 every year, is sheer nonsense. We believe the soil 

 of the United States will be as productive a hun- 

 dred years heace as it is to-day — and this owing 

 to the very law which the Professor considers 

 "strangely hostile to the enduring growth of aU 

 our bread-formijig plants." 



(c.) Professor, you are di-eaming. You deny the 

 destruction of ammonia by the wheat plant, be- 1 



cause it would follow that a soil " must he fertilised 

 with two or three bushels of wheat in order to 

 produce one," and then,, to show the absurdity of 

 such an idea, you say that the ancient Babylonians^ 

 "raised two hundred bushels of wheat from one of 

 seedy You forget that we are talking of manures, 

 not seed. The facts stated, if true, are interesting, 

 but they have not the remotest bearing on the point 

 under discussion. 



The elements contained in a bushel of wheat can. 

 be purchased for ten or fifteen cents, and that in a 

 condition better suited as a manure than would be 

 the wheat itself. Does the Professor think that ten 

 or fifteen cents worth of manure will produce an 

 extra bushel of wheat? If he does, we assure him 

 he has only to make the experiment to become sat- 

 isfied of his error. Plow under a crop of wheat 

 that would yield fifteen bushels per acre, and then 

 sow the land again to wheat, and your next crop 

 would not give an increase of fifteen bushels of 

 wheat per acre ; plow under a good crop of clover 

 or peas, and you might obtain an inci'ease of fifteen, 

 bushels of wheat per acre ; and this owing to the 

 fact that wheat destroys a-iimonia, while clover 

 and peas do not. 



(d.) It is true that we did not see the ammonia 

 enter the roots of the plants. But if on one acre, 

 an application of 25 lbs. of ammonia gives an in- 

 crease of five bushels of wheat, and 50 lbs. on an- 

 other acre, ten bushels,— 75 lbs. fitteen bushels, and 

 100 lbs. twenty bushels ;— if, in short, the increase 

 of wheat is in proportion to the ammoniai supplied 

 as manure, it is fair to assume that the ammonia i» 

 the cause of the increase. It did not increase the 

 crop by rendering phosphate of lime or other min- 

 eral or organic substances in the soil soluble, for an 

 application of soluble phosphate of lime and all the 

 other mineral and organic ingredients of plants, 

 (except nitrogen — ammonia — or nitric acid,) did 

 not increase the crop. The ammonia, therefore, 

 must have leen taTcen up J>y the roots of the plants. 

 Now, the plants did not contain more than about 

 one fifth as much nitrogen (ammonia) as Vtras sup- 

 plied in the manure. We conclude, therefore, that 

 they had dissipated (thrown oE into the atmos- 

 phere) four-fifths of the ammonia taken up by the 

 roots. Dr. Lee thinks that the plants only took 

 up one-fifth of the ammonia supplied in manure, 

 and that the other four-fifths was washed out of 

 the soil. Now we cannot conceive how the rain 

 should wash out of one acre of soil 20 lbs. of am- 

 monia, and leave 5 lbs. for the use of the plants,— 

 out ot another acre 40 lbs. and leave 10 lbs., — out 

 of another 60 lbs. and leave' 15 lbs.,— and out of 

 another acre 80 lbs., and leave 20 lbs. to be ab- 

 sorbed by the plants. The increase of wheat was 

 in proportion to the ammonia supplied as manure ; 



