I 



that Si 2.50 an acre would no more than renovate 

 them, calling for an outlay of $100,000,000, criticism 

 was botli expected and desired. 'I'lie truth can only 

 be elicited, and the evil corrected, by public discus- 

 sion. To provoke this was the deliberate aim of the 

 " startling statements" erroneously ascribed to the 

 Commissioner of Patents. Tliey were made by one 

 who was born and reared on a farm in the State of 

 New York, and who has devoted most of his life to 

 the study of this and kindred topics. Tliat partially 

 exhausted soils may be improved with a profit, is a 

 point for which we have long contended : but in New 

 York the profit will be diminished from *10 to $15 

 an acre, before the land can be fully renovated. If 

 so, the injury done to impoverished fields, and dam- 

 age to their owners and tl)e State, is an average of 

 $12.50 an acre. There are 12,000,000 acres under 

 cultivation in New York, and from our childhood up 

 we have seen farmers extract potash and bone-earth 

 from tins soil, and send both to distant markets, never 

 to return. Will any man of common intelligence 

 say that tliis vast area of impoverished soil contains 

 as much of the elements of bones, and as much potash 

 and other alkalies, now, as it did seventy-five years 

 ago ? One-half of the earthy matter removed in a 

 crop of potatoes, is potash : and one-third of that 

 taken out of a field in the seeds of wlieat, is the same 

 alkali. Whether a farmer buys wood ashes and 

 bones at their market price, or labors for years to 

 draw them from his sub-soil, in either case it will 

 cost him from ^10 to ^15 an acre to supply his sur- 

 face soil with as nnich as God gave it before man 

 began to till it, and tcastc its elements of food and 

 clothing. INIan has not the power to curse the earth 

 with irredeemable sterility. But to say that to im- 

 poverish it does not involve an injury to the commu- 

 nity, and the necessity of a loss of labor to renovate 

 it, is simply to assert what every man of sense knows 

 to be untrue. No hocus-pocus, " leaven in bread," 

 will add lime, soda, potash, phosphorus, magnesia, 

 chlorine, sulphur, soluble silica, or rich mold, to a 

 worn out cotton, corn, or wheal field. "The vege- 

 tative power of the eartli, with due proportions of 

 air, moisture, and warmth, on any land, be it nothing 

 but sand," is a very pleasant dream, but nothing 

 more substantial. No amount of pure sand, air, 

 warmth, and moisture, will form the bones in a 

 man's little finger, nor the brain in his cranium. 

 His (!aily bread and meat must contain other ingre- 

 dients extracted from the earth. 



To increase its natural productiveness is entirely 

 practicable ; but it will cost money or labor to achieve 

 this desirable result. Nor can the end ever be at- 

 tained by falsely asserting that '-a million tons of 

 human food" may be annually taken from as small 

 an area as will produce it, without restitution, and 

 not deteriorate the soil. There are scores of writers 

 on agriculture who tearli this false theory, and call 

 it science. How much an acre of land can sjjare of 

 grain, cotton, or otiier crops, every year, without 

 detriment, depends mostly on its chemical and geo- 

 logical character, but partly on its mechanical tex- 

 ture. Not before farmers are willing to foster the 

 study of agriculture as a learned niid useful profes- 

 sion, will they ever understand the true capacity of 

 the soil to feed and clothe the human family. It is 

 not far from the precise truth to say that they waste 

 as much hard work, needlessly and heedlessly, every 

 year, as all the mechanics, merchants, doctors, law- 

 yers, and others, perform. There are in the State 



of New York alone, 500,000 tillers of the soil, who 

 in the main work very hard to make large crops out 

 of small materials : acting on the principle that a 

 little yeast should give an ovenful of bread, without 

 flour or meal ! The nighlsoil annually wasted in 

 the State of New York, would make thirty million 

 bushels of w-heat, if saved, properly deodorized, and 

 drilled in with the seed. This fertilizer is the bone 

 and muscle of the land, drawn from its surface and 

 thrown away, to compel the next generation to give 

 more honest sweat for their food and raiment, or 

 emigrate to the virgin soils somewhere this side of 

 sun-down. 



PATENT OFFICE REPORT -Part n. 

 AGRICULTURAL METKOROLOGY. 



There are few sciences the study of which is more 

 useful to the farmer than that of Meteorology. A 

 soil may contain all the atoms required to form a 

 luxuriant crop, yet, if the temperature of the ground, 

 or of the air above it, be too low, vegetation makes 

 no progress. Again, tlie eartli and atmosphere may 

 have a due degree of warmth and light, as well as 

 abound in all the food of plants in an available form, 

 except water, and the absence of this element will 

 be fatal to the hopes of the husbandman. 



Atmospheric air, light, heat, electricity, rain, dew, 

 snow, and frost, exert a controlling influence over 

 the growth of all cultivated plants. A knowledge 

 of the natural laws by which these generally invisi- 

 ble and imponderable bodies are governed, so far as 

 researches have revealed them, is alike valuable and 

 interesting. The atmosphere and the numerous 

 phenomena of which it is the theatre, should com- 

 mand more attention in this country than they liitl>- 

 erto have received, if we intend to keep pace with 

 the progress of physical science in Europe. To en- 

 courage the study of meteorology in its application 

 to agriculture, is the object of this chapter. 



The Atmosphere is mainly composed of two dis- 

 tinct gases, which are invisible but not imponderable 

 bodies, and every where surround the planet, like an 

 ocean. It has a mean depth of some forty-five miles. 

 The gases which form the air are called nitrngcn 

 and oxygen. According to the accurate analysis of 

 dry, pure, air, made by MM. Dumas and Boussing- 

 ault, 100 parts consist of 20.8 oxygen and 79.2 

 nitrogen. These chemists found from 2 to 5 parts 

 of carbonic acid in 10,000 of atmosplieric air. Dr. 

 Frbsenius has ascertained that the proportion of 

 ammonia in the atmosphere is as 1 to 2,000,000, 

 varying to 1 to .'!,000,000. Undoubtedly there are 

 many other volatile and gaseous bodies in the atmos- 

 phere, in a state so extremely diluted and diffused as 

 to escape all chemical tests. Sir Robert Kane 

 fotmd that sulphuretted hydrogen will i)ass through 

 a thin piece of India rubber into the atmosphere, 

 against a pressure equal to fifty times the woiglit of 

 common air. Gaseous compounds of phosphorus, 

 chlorine, and sulphur, are constantly discharged from 

 decaying animal and vegetable substances into the 

 atmosphere. These gases fall to the earth again in 

 rain-water. It is one of the laws peculiar to all 

 gases, that the presence of one in any given space 

 does not in the least prevent several others from occu- 

 pying the vacancies left between atoms of gas thai 

 seem to repel each other with singular aversion. 

 The facility with which tlie atmosphere takes up 

 vapor when water evaporates, is familiar to all. 



I 



ill 





