iliilil f Mill. 



Vol. 9, 



ROCHESTER, N. Y. — MAY, 1848. 



No. 5. 



THK GENESEE F.VRMER: 



Ixsiied on the first of each moulh, at Rochester, N. Y. , by 

 D. D. T. MOOKE, PROPRIETOR. 



DANIEL LEE & D. D. T. MOORE, Editors. 



p. BARRY, Conductor of Horticultural Department 



FIFTY CENTS A YEAR: 

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 If directed to individuals. Eiglit copies for ^3, if only directed 

 to one person— and any larger number, addressed in like man- 

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The Balance of Organic Nature. 



In our last paper, we endeavored to make the 

 unlearned reader understand the important fact 

 that, no animal can subsist on decomposed ani- 

 mal and vegetable substances; and that plants 

 alone are endowed with power to re-organize the 

 constituents of the bodies of all living beings, 

 after they have been fully disorganized by any 

 means whatever. It is our present purpose to 

 offer a ^e\v remarks illustrative of the beautiful 

 and e.xact balance of organic nature, whether the 

 matter exists in the form of minerals, vegetables, 

 or animals. Laboring farmers are just beginning 

 to discover the almost unlimited power which 

 their Maker has given them over three kingdoms 

 of nature, viz : the Mineral, Vegetable, and An- 

 imal kingdoms. Tne mineral kingdom includes 

 all rocks, metals, loose earth, water, air, and all 

 other matter which is neither a vegetable nor 

 animal substance. The thing- which belong to 

 the mineral kingdom were created before vitality, 

 either vegetable or animal, had an e.xistence on 

 the planet. When life ceases, there are chemi- 

 cal laws which operate with greater or less force, 

 to disorganize and mineralize the bodies of all 

 plants and animals. Now, it is impossible to 

 understand the best process for re-organizing the 

 mineral constituents of human food and clothing, 

 as they exist in the soil, in air and water, with- 

 out studying closely the decay and perfect disso- 

 lution of all the products of animal and vegetable 

 life. Every farmer should seek to acquire a 

 knowledge of the balance, or the even and recip- 

 rocal de'iendance of all animate and inanimate 

 things, on the surface of the earth. If plants 

 alone organize all living compounds, not merely 

 wood, starch, oil, sugar, gum, and gluten ; but 

 fat, butter, cheese, flesh, wool, brain, and the 

 like, how do these substances get back again into 

 their original state of simple minerals? Let us 

 see. If we weigh the food of an adult, non- 

 growing man, horse, cow, or other domestic an- 

 imal, for twenty days, and all the excretions from 



the bowels and kidneys for the same time, esti- 

 mating all the matter consumed and voided at its 

 dry weight, the matter that escapes through the 

 passages named, will weigh not far from forty 

 per cent, of that taken into the stomach. The 

 loss is sixty per cent, or thereabout. If we ex- 

 amine the air taken into the lungs at each inspi- 

 ration and compare it with that expired every 

 time these organs are compressed in breathing, 

 the expelled air is found to contair^one hundred 

 times more carbon, and far more moisture, (oxy- 

 gen and hydrogen combined,) than it did when 

 it entered the lungs. The critical analysis of all 

 organized matter used as food for man and his 

 domestic animals, discloses the interesting fact 

 that, carbon and the elements of water (the va- 

 por thrown out of the lungs) constitute from 

 eighty to ninety-nine parts in every hundred of 

 such food. The ceaseless operation of breathing 

 serves to burn up and mineralize a vast and in- 

 definite quantity of organized carbon, oxygen, 

 and hydrogen ; and we will add nitrogen. This 

 latter element escapes with moisture in insensi- 

 ble, or sensible perspiration; still more largely 

 in urine; and to a considerable extent in the 

 fecal dejections from the bowels. 



All the matter voided by animals which is not 

 fully mineralized, as well as the bodies of all liv- 

 ing things after their death, decompose by fer- 

 menting, rotting, or otherwise passing back into 

 air, water, and earth. Take a rich vegetable 

 mold, till it, and allow no crop nor plant to grow 

 therein, and you will soon consume it all — con- 

 verting its organized carbon into carbonic acid ; 

 its oxygen and hydrogen into water; and its ni- 

 trogen into volatile ammonia. 



Mineral coal dug from the earth is organized 

 carbon buried in ancient reeds and forests by the 

 sinking down of the crust of the planet at partic- 

 ular points, and the washing in of earthy sedi- 

 ment above the submerged forest, to be consoli- 

 dated into stratified or sedimentary rocks. The 

 prodigious force of volcanic power, acting from 

 below, upheaves all these strata , their cracks 

 and wide fissures are washed into valleys by the 

 ceaseless action of rain, frost, electricity, light, 

 heat, and other meteoric influences ; and thus 

 they wear down solid rocks to coal beds, and 

 often far below them. 



Carbon is the coal which may be obtained 

 alike from wood, straw, grain, flesh, and almost, 

 if not quite every truly organized product of life. 

 There is carbon enough in the carbonic acid 

 which is chemically combined with lime in lime- 

 stone rock, to cover the whole globe with a pure 



