1853. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



471 



best essays will be continued, and will be adopted 

 by other societies more generally. It will create 

 a species of literature, that will be useful not on- 

 ly to the rising, but to the risen generation. The 

 plan of occupying three days in the annual meet- 

 ing of the Society, adds very much to the interest 

 of the occasion. There is then no excuse for hur- 

 ry, bustle and confusion, but all goes on with or- 

 der, deliberation and system. These protracted 

 meeting so? the dwellers among the hills and valleys, 

 who see but little of each other during the year, 

 are not only pleasant but highly useful in many 

 ways which we cannot now specify. Our remarks 

 have extended to a much greater length than we 

 intended, and we cut them short with the wish — 

 that when the fair women and the strong men of 

 the Granite State come together at Manchester, to 

 hold their annual festival, may we be there to see. 



For the New England Farmer. 



"EXPERIMENTAL FARMING" ONCE 

 MORE. 



THE PASS. 



Messrs. Editors : — I find in the July number 

 of the Fanner, that your correspondent, Mr. Silas 

 Brown, of VVilmington, asserts that I criticise the 

 communication, "Experimental Farming," with a 

 home thrust and make a pass at his friend S. F., 

 of Winchester. If asking a few questions of one 

 whose opportunities for observation have been 

 more extensive than mine, is making a pass at a 

 man, I am guilty of that frequently, and if Mr.'S. 

 F. will answer those questions fairly and fully 

 as Mr. J. G. Chandler has one of them on page 

 278, June No. Farmer, he will reflect more light 

 upon practical agriculture than will be likely to 

 be received from all these scribhlings an experi- 

 mental farming. 



I noticed his carefully adjusted armor, but 

 there appeared to be places where a bow drawn 

 at a venture might perchance lodge an arrow be- 

 tween the joints of his harness ; yet to try to 

 draw out the practical information which his op- 

 portunities for making observations on the growth 

 of crops, &c., in different parts of the country, 

 seemed so well adapted to enable him to give, 

 promised more immediate profit than open hostili- 



ty- 



THE OPINION. 



But let us return to friend Brown, who says 

 that he has yet to learn how J. is going to defend 

 himself in his opinion and by his spirit of contro- 

 versy against the results of the experiments of our 

 best practical chemists. Here let me state once 

 for all, that I intend to do no such thing. My 

 opinion has been established upon the authority 

 of just such men as he refers to. Indeed, my lim- 

 ited knowledge of the chemical analyses of soils 

 my confidence in the importance and value of the 

 same, have each been derived from our best prac 

 tical chemists. The Avritings of Prof. Johnston, 

 Mapes and Norton, Dr. Dana and others, — not 

 excepting some of the contributors to the N. E. 

 Farmer; see Vol. 1, p-. 389 — in entire volumes 

 bearing their names, and in communications to 

 various agricultural journals, have for several years 



beguiled much of my leisure into hours of pleasur- 

 able—and I had fondly dreamed profitable— study, 

 and have done much towards influencing me to 

 abandon my mechanical occupation under the im- 

 pression that a wider field was open for the study 

 and application of the sciences in the pursuits of 

 the farm. But just as I had begun to fancy my- 

 self established in the element of scientific agri- 

 culture, Mr. Silas Brown, an experimental farmer , 

 informs us that chemists themselves have acknowl- 

 edged the imperfections of chemical analysis of 

 soils as applicable to practical purposes in agri- 

 culture. 



SPECIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 



Since your correspondent and his friend S. F. 

 quote so largely from, and expatiate so freely upon, 

 the confessions and acknowledgments "of chem- 

 ists themselves," let us see if a few more cannot 

 be extorted from them. Here is one from Prof. 

 Johnston, — found in his Lectures on the Applica- 

 tion of Chemistry and Geology to Agriculture, 

 Lecture XIII: "Some persons have been led to ex- 

 pect too much from the chemical analysis of a soil, 

 as if this alone were necessary at once to explain 

 all its qualities, and to indicate a ready method of 

 imparting to it every desirable quality, while oth- 

 ers have as far depreciated tlieir worth, and have 

 pronounced them in all cases to be more curious 

 than useful. The truth here as on most other sub- 

 jects, lies in the middle between these extreme 

 "opiniolJs. If you have followed me in the views 

 I have endeavored to press upon you in regard to 

 the necessity of inorganic food to plants — which 

 food can only be derived from the soil, and which 

 must vary in kind and quantity with the species 

 of crop to be raised, you will at once perceive that 

 the rigorous analysis of a soil may impart most 

 valuable knowledge to -the practical man in the 

 form of useful suggestions for its improvemept. 

 It may indeed show that to apply the only availa- 

 ble substances to the soil which are capable of 

 remedying its defects, would involve an expense 

 for which, in existing circumstances, the land 

 could never give an equivalent return. Yet even 

 in this latter case, the results of analysis will not 

 be without their value to the prudent man, since 

 they will deter him from adding to his soil what 

 he knows it already to contain, and will set him 

 upon the search after some more economical source 

 of these ingredients which are likely to benefit it 

 most." Now hear Prof. Norton, — Elements of 

 Sientific Agriculture, p. 185 : "The farmer must 

 remember that all of the substances with which 

 he has to do, all of the agents that are at his 

 command, are connected in their composition and 

 action with the fourteen elementary bodies, or- 

 ganic and inorganic, that have been described in 

 this little work. If he preserves them, or if he 

 adds them as manures in an improper form, his 

 utmost exertions are of little avail ; if in proper 

 form, his land becomes fertile, and his returns 

 all that heart could wish. If one is absent, the 

 others may all be useless ; if one is present too 

 largely, the same effect upon the action of the oth- 

 ers may ensue. How immensely important, then, 

 and how directly practical is the knowledge of 

 these elements, and of the immense variety of com- 

 binations in which they present themselves."— 

 Prof. Johnston again. Lee. XIII, ^ 2 : "The quan- 

 tity of some of these substances which is necessa- 

 ry to plants is so very small, that nothing but a 



