Agricolture is the most Healthf and Honorable, as it is the most Natural and Useful pnrsmt of Man. 



VOL. XI. 



ROCHESTER, N. Y.— FEBRUARY, 1850. 



NO. 2. 



THE PRINCIPLES OF AGRIOtJLTURE. 



How mucli wheat or cheese can a farmer take from 

 an acre of common, fair land, every year, and not 

 impair its fertility ? Suppose that he extracts the 

 elements of wheat or cheese from his farm to the av- 

 erage depth of 12 inches; what amount of these 

 elements will each cubic foot of his soil contain ? 

 In short, how much wheat, or how much cheese is 

 there in that quantity of fair, common earth, provided 

 one separated tlie whole of the matter that can by 

 any known system of tillage, grazing or feeding, 

 form the products named ? 



The bare statement of the propositions in the above 

 form, is sufficient to satisfy a close observer, that not 

 one man in a thousand has ever studied the first prin- 

 ciples of scientific agriculture. Nor will the things 

 in the soil that make good grass and a plenty of it, 

 good wheat and sound potatoes, and a plenty of both, 

 ever he generally known to the farming community 

 till the elements of agriculture, like the elements of 

 arithmetic and grammar, be well studied in common 

 schools and academies. School boys can readily be 

 taught to understand the language of science; but 

 business men have little taste for, or patience with, 

 what appears as the meaningless jargon of an unknown 

 tongue. Take the ease which we now have in hand. 

 Our wish is to impart to all readers who know noth- 

 ing of the terms and principles of analytical chemistry, 

 a clear idea of all the substances in a cubic foot of 

 earth that can be transformed into wheat or cheese. 

 But the moment we begin to talk about the amount 

 of phosphate of lime, and ammonia, in 100 lbs of soil, 

 and the quantity of wheat or cheese which they will 

 supply with those indispensable elements, the unedu- 

 cated in agricultural chemistry will fail to compre- 

 hend the force of the reasoning submitted to his 

 understanding. It will be like giving a boy a sum in 

 cube root who has yet to learn addition, subtraction 

 and multiplication. Hoping this defect in popular 

 education will one day bo removed by the Free 

 Schools in the State of New York, we will proceed 

 with our inquiry as to the quantity of wheat which 

 a cubic foot can make, before the raw material will 

 be mainly consumed in the crop, or lost in producing if. 



No American citizen is so stupid as to believe that 

 a. bushel of wheat can be organized in any place from 

 nothing. It w'U take somtthing to make the first seed 

 of this grain: and that something must come from 

 somewhere. We have before us, in English journals, 

 well authenticated cases, in which 200 cwt. of Peru- 



vian guano applied to an acre of wheat have added a 

 quarter, or 8 imperial bushels to the crop. Here is 

 a gain of over four pounds of wheat to one of ferti- 

 lizer. A critical analysis of any ordinary soil, of 

 wheat, and of guano or bird dung, will show that the 

 manure named will yield to growing wheat plants 

 those elements of its seed, which are least abundant, 

 and soonest exhausted in tilled land. These facts 

 are of great practical importance, for they warrant 

 the conclusion that so far as the material for making 

 wheat is lacking in the soil, although the particular 

 atoms needed be exceedingly small in the plant, yet 

 the crop will not grow beyond the supply of its 

 peculiar constituents. A great many experiments 

 have been tried to determine what atoms are most 

 needed in ordinary wheat soils to organize this grain; 

 and ammonia or nitrogen in the form named, or in 

 that of nitric acid, has been found most useful; but 

 phosphates and sulphates of lime, potash and mag- 

 nesia and common salt (chloride of sodium) arc only 

 a little less beneficial. Guano contains all of these 

 as well as ammonia. 



A cubic foot of fair wheat soil also contains all the 

 elements of wheat or bird dung: but in no large 

 quantities. English and Scotch farmers now grow 

 about twice as much w'heat per acre as anv other 

 farmers in the civilized world; and they do this sim- 

 ply by feeding the growing plants with the things 

 known to be consumed by nature in organizing the 

 crop. Strange as it may sound to such as have not 

 investigated this matter, skilful dairymen.have ceased 

 to expect a cow to give a large product in butter or 

 cheese, which is not well fed on nutritious food full 

 of the organized elements of milk. Nor do they ex- 

 pect a dung hill fowl to form a decent shell to an esg 

 without lime, or the egg itself, without organized 

 nitrogen, sulphur, phosphorus and the other elemen- 

 tary bodies found in a chicken when first hatched. 



The practical advantages of these researches art- 

 numerous. They reduce agriculture and rural econ- 

 omy to a scifHCe which is governed in all its essential 

 parts by uniform and enduring Natural Laws. The 

 time will never come when a calf or pig can form its 

 bones out of iron; or when a kernel of corn will be 

 organized from any other atoms than such as God 

 first appointed, and fitted for the purpose. Hence, 

 nothing is more variable than the quantity of corn, 

 wheat and potatoes which can grow on an acre of 

 land. Crops of this kind can never be made with the 

 greatest economy of labor and material, till the com- 

 position of these crops be familiar to the farmer ; 



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