S848. 



GENESEE FARMER. 



95 



[ Editorial Correspondonce of the Genesee Farmer. ] 



The Food of Plants. 



As our associate who is on the ground speaks 

 in the March number of having " large and un- 

 expected additions to our subscription list," we 

 "desire to hold a little plain conversation with 

 these new readers on The Food of Plants. 



All thinking, reasoning men have become sat- 

 isfied that to form one, two, or three tons of any 

 €rop on an acre of land in a season, the vegeta- 

 ble vitality which changes earth, air and water 

 into such crop can operate successfully no 

 further than the supply of matter precisely 

 adapted to the wants of each plant extends. The 

 theory is that no amount of hard work can pos- 

 sibly make corn, potatoes, wheat, or apples, or 

 any other living thing, out of nothing. Nor 

 can it form them by any possibility out of other 

 ingredients than the things which God has ap- 

 pointed for that purpose. Hence, if your soil 

 has 99 parts in 100 within reach of a crop of 

 potatoes or corn, of all that is required to make 

 80 bushels of the latter and 400 of the former, 

 on an acre, these 99 parts go for nothing, just so far 

 as the other one part is lacking. To illustrate : 

 100 pounds of gypsum have often added 2,000 

 pounds of clover hay, to an acre ; and could 

 you fairly estimate the increase of clover roots, 

 and all below wher<^ the scythe clips, the net 

 gain would be 3,000 pounds 



Your reason, kind reader, informs you that 

 100 pounds of sulphur, oxygen, and the metal 

 called calcium, (which are the constituents of 

 gypsum,) never created 29,000 pounds of clover 

 out of no'hing. The 2,900 pounds of matter, 

 which with the addition of the sulphur and per- 

 haps lime in the gypsum, formed 3,000 lbs. of 

 the plants named, existed within reach of the 

 clover as well before as after the lacking ele- 

 ments were applied. But, as no other element 

 in the world can fill the place which God has as- 

 signed to sulphur in organizing the living bodies 

 of vegetables and animals, wherever and when 

 ever this substance is lacking, such organiza 

 tions can not proceed. Any bird which can or- 

 ganize a perfect egg without a particle of sul- 

 phur to enter into the composition of its yolk, 

 can create and lay a little world, with all its in- 

 habitants ! lu 100 lbs. of feathers, wool and hair 

 there is 5 lbs. of sulphur. If clover contained 

 not an atom of this substance, how could the 

 sheep, the cow, the horse, or the pig, subsist on 

 food which lacked an indispensable constituent 

 of its brain and nerves, its flesh and hair, and of 

 the milk designed by the Creator to build up 

 every tissue of its young offspring ? 



You know, for Heaven has made you a rea- 

 soning, intelligent human being, that neither 

 children nor brutes can know whether the plants 

 on which they live — the seeds of maize, beans 

 and wheat — the fruits of the apple, pear, peach, 



and the vine — contain the elements necessary 

 to form their bones and their muscles. What 

 then ? Only this : that Infinite Wisdom pro- 

 tects their lives and health by preventing your 

 crops from growing — organizing grass roots, 

 tubers, seeds or fruit of any kind — one pound 

 beyond the supply of each constituent element 

 required to make the whole body of a Man. 

 Think of this truth, and remember God has en- 

 dowed us with high intellectual faculties, for the 

 great purpose that we may study and understand 

 "how wonderfully and fearfully we are made" ! 



In using vegetable vitality with a view to or- 

 ganize food for man, you have much to learn. 

 All that the writer can do is to give a few hints. 

 Salt this remark down in one corner of your 

 memory : Vegetable vitality alone is endowed 

 with the power to combine those constituent 

 elements of plants and animals, called lime, pot- 

 ash, soda, silicia, magnesia, iron, chlorine, sul- 

 phur, phosphorus, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen 

 and nitrogen, into living compounds. A man, 

 a bird, a fish, an insect, a worm — all animals 

 — can alike subsist on a slice of good wheat 

 bread, i. e. they can organize their bones, feath- 

 ers, scales, flesh, &c., out of the elements al- 

 ready organized by the vitality in the germs of 

 the wheat plant Mark well the grand natural 

 distinction between animal and vegetable vitality. 

 Decompose your slice of bread by burning it, or 

 any other means, into its original mineral ele- 

 ments, {air and icater are minerals as much 

 as iron'in the language of science); and col- 

 lect all the constituents of the bread in a 

 clean glass vessel. Now, neither man, fish, 

 bird nor insect can form a particle of flesh out 

 of the matter which made the bread ; but a young 

 plant, under favorable circumstances of light, 

 warmth, &c., can re-organize all the constit- 

 uents of the bread into nutritious food for ani- 

 mals. Vegetable life has infinitely greater force 

 than that of animals ; but it cannot transmute 

 one element into another— iron into gold, for 

 instance — nor create anew one particle of any 

 element when perchance it shall be lacking and 

 needed this season to organize for you a large 

 yield of sound potatoes. Vegetable life is older 

 than animal life. 



That portion of the food of cultivated plants 

 which is most deficient in ordinary soils, viz : 

 bone-earth or phosphate of lime, sulphate of 

 lime or gypsum, chloride of sodium or common 

 salt, salts of potash and magnesia, we find from 

 a great number of analyses, more abundant in 

 the sub than in the surface soil. This is a fact 

 of much importance as a purely practical ques- 

 tion of tillage. It indicates the utility of break- 

 ing up, and making fine the undercrust, so that 

 all hungry roots may readily penetrate far into 

 the bo,som of their mother earth. The subsoil 

 need not be brought to the surface, unless you 

 prefer so to do. Deep tilth and thorough drain- 



