142 



GENESEE FARMER. 



June. 



winter day. The dry weight of the dung of a 

 bird is only about one-fifth of that of the food 

 consumed. 



All animals literally burn up, and wholly dis- 

 organize, or mineralize, a large portion of the 

 organized matter vvhich constitutes their food. 

 Nor does the mineralizing process cease when 

 animals drop their solid and liquid excretions on 

 the earth ; or leave their dead bodies like dead 

 plants to rot on the ground. Every body knows 

 thai when plants, anim.als and the dung of the 

 latter decay on the surface of the earth, they 

 rapidly loose weight and load the surrounding 

 atmosphere with poisonous gasses, which being 

 lighter than the pure air, rise high, and are car 

 ried far and near by winds. The quantity of 

 organized matter called mould in the virgin soil 

 of an ordinary American forest, will weigh, we 

 are confident, less that the one-twentieth part of 

 the organized matter that falls to the ground in 

 leaves, limbs and trunks of trees, in the course of 

 twenty years, to say nothing of the mass of roots 

 whicii rot in the soil. Fermentation decomposes 

 an immense amount of organized carbon, nitro- 

 gen, and the elements of water. In the every 

 day process of raising dough to make light bread, 

 about 7 per cent of the flour is converted into 

 gas, or mineralized. That is, 100 lbs. of dry 

 flour will make but 93 lbs of perfectly dry fer- 

 mented bread ; and 100 lbs of this will form but 

 40 of dry excretions. If these be dropped on 

 the earth in the ordinary course of nature, prob- 

 ably less than ten pounds of permanent soil will 

 result from the wheat consumed. 



We never proposed that farmers should burn 

 their manure, straw, &c., and apply the ashes 

 as an economical substitute for the whole mass. 

 Nevertheless, we have often urged them to study 

 the laws of vegetable organization and disor^^n- 

 ization, to the end that they might learn among 



the value of these fertilizers. But decom- 

 pose 100 lbs. of wheat or corn in the bodies of 

 common dung hill fowls and save their guano — 

 the ashes of the seeds consumed — and apply 

 this fertilizer skilfully to wheat or corn before 

 new seeds are to be organized, and our word for 

 it. the earthy matter which once made wheal 

 will be found peculiarly valuable to form wheat 

 again. A pound of dry hen-dung, formed of 

 wheat, is worth more than a like weight of dry 

 wheat straw to make the seeds of wheat ; and 

 why ? Simply because it contains more of the 

 constituent elements of the seeds of this plant 

 than do the stems of the same, particularly phos- 

 phates of lime and ammonia. How far ammo- 

 nia and nitric acid may be dispensed with in fer- 

 tilizing soils, there are no sufficient experiments 

 on record, known to us, to decide the question. 

 Nitric acid is said to be formed in the atmos- 

 phere by the chemical union of its oxygen and 

 nitrogen when an electric spark passes through 

 vapor in a thunder-cloud. Ammonia is formed 

 in decaying vegetable and animal substances, and 

 rises into the air. Nitric acid, ammonia and 

 carbonic acid are soluble in rain water, and fall 

 with it, and in dews to the earth. They aid 

 rain water in dissolving common limestone and 

 other earthy minerals, which, with the acids 

 named, and ammonia, enter the roots of all 

 plants, ascend to their leaves or green stems, 

 where the light of the sun and other agencies, 

 decomposed water, nitric and carbonic acids, 

 ammonia and earthy salts, and out of these ma- 

 terials build up the body of the living being, ab- 

 sorbing and fixing both heat and light in the pro- 

 cess. Burn a tree or plant, and both heat and 

 light will be expelled, as you mineralize organ- 

 ized carbon and hydrogen. 



At one of the first agricultural meetings held 



at the old State Hall, in the city of Albany, the 



other things equally useful, why it is that 100 1 Hon. Friend Humphrey, then Mayor of the 



lbs. of pure guano often go as far in making I city, gave an interesting account of having 



wheat in England, as 2,000 lbs of ordinary barn 

 yard manure. The fact that there is a difler- 

 ence iu the fertilizing power of various manures 

 is well known. Our belief is that this power 

 exists mainly in the soluble earthy minerals used 

 by nature in re-organizing the elements of crops, 

 which fly off into the atmosphere when they rot 

 on the ground, or when consumed by man and 

 his domestic animals, and burnt in their bodies 

 to maintain the breath of life, and at last go out 

 of their nostrils. Black muck or mould, no 

 matter how deep, without the eartiiy salts of 

 silica, lime, potash, soda, magnesia and iron, 

 combined with phosphoric, sulphuric and hydro- 

 chloric acids, would be valueless tor growing 

 wheat, corn, clover and other crops. We are 

 far from discarding the use of an)monia, char- 

 coal, or stable manure, as "P." more than in- 

 sinuates. 



grown 120 bushels of shelled corn on two acres 

 of poor pine-plain land, by putting a iew horn 

 scrapings or shavings, from a comb factory, in 

 each hill at the time of planting. Another acre, 

 similar in all respects but the fertilizer, was 

 planted, and gave hardly one fourth of 60 bushels. 

 So far as these corn plants derived their nutri- 

 ment from air, rain and dew, all faired alike ; 

 and in the main the soil, as to organic matter and 

 earthy minerals, was alike on each acre. The 

 weight of the fertilizer used bore no comparison 

 to that of the crop. Why then should the latter 

 show a net gain of 90 bushels of corn, and prob- 

 ably of stalks and leaves in proportion, on two 

 acres ? Let us suppose that each hill of corn 

 without any artificial food, was able to expand 

 its roots so as to draw nourishment from one 

 cubic foot of soil, and that this would give a pro- 

 duct equal to 15 bushels. Now any fertilizer 



Butii theory and practice alike demonstrate' that should feed the plants at the proper time and 



