

THE GENESEE FARMER. 



that frequent washing rains and melting snow, may not dissolve every mineral atom 

 available in plowed and hoed earth as food for plants, and convey it into ditches, swamps, 

 creeks, springs, wells, and rivers ? Of all the myriads of species of animals on the 

 globe, man alone impoverishes the ground ; and he alone cultivates it. If this cultiva- 

 tion be unwisely performed, the soil's natural fruitfulness will be consumed and wasted 

 as certainly as fire will consume dry stubble when kindled into a blaze. Everythino- 

 turns on the pivot of wise or unwise cultivation. In order to practice the one and avoid 

 the other, we are required to solve this problem : How can a farmer grow large and 

 remunerative crops with the least injury to the land, and the smallest outlay for manure ? 

 Before this problem can be feirly solved, one needs a critical knowledge of the vital 

 force in all seeds sown or planted ; and also a knowledge of the various atoms imbibed 

 and organized in living, growing germs, by which they increase in weight and substance, 

 and finally reach full and perfect maturity, with ample provision for the next generation 

 of living plants. Nor is it enough to be able to measure with accuracy the vital force 

 of different seeds, and understand the elements of the food of all agricultural beings, 

 whether vegetable or animal. Ev(?i-y atom of this food, and every living cell and tissue, 

 no matter how organized, is subjected at all times to unbending and never ending 

 natural laws. 



Before we, as practical farmers, can deal wisely with the things that really form our 

 meat, butter, cheese, wool, fruit, grain, and vegetables, it is indispensable that we study 

 those fixed laws which God established to govern the minerals in our soils, and the 

 increase and decrease of mold and fertility on the surface of the earth. Were I called 

 upon to write an agricultural catechism, law and order in farming, based, not on the 

 doubtful precepts of man, but the laws of his Creator would be the first words to be 

 committed to memory, and the first principles to be mastered by the pupil. As a plain, 

 working cultivator of the soil, I believe in the systematic study of all the substances 

 and forces, whether vital or physical, with which we have to do ; but outside of and 

 beyond all these, I recognise a law which binds the mineral to the vegetable kingdom, 

 the vegetable to the animal kingdom, and the animal to both of the others, in a way 

 that makes a knowledge of this law the most important and useful element in a farmer's 

 education. Those atoms which you toil so long and anxiously to make appear in the 

 form and condition which you see them in this ear of corn, this potato, and this apple 

 [the speaker showing them], bear peculiar relations to each other as the representatives 

 of the three great kingdoms of Nature. Although the seeds of this maize contain only 

 about one per cent, of incombustibLe earthy matter, and the potato and apple not far 

 from the'same quantity, yet there is abundant reason to believe that not only our crops 

 depend, in a good degree, on the presence of these incombustible atoms in a soluble 

 state, in the soil, but the agricultural value of its mold is governed by the presence or 

 absence of the same earthy atoms. It is the relations that parent rocks bear to soils, 

 and the plants that naturally grow thereon, as well as the relations which subsist 

 between sunshine, solar heat, frost, atmospheric gases, rain, and dew, and all agricultural 

 plants and animals, that limit the rewards of rural industry. Increase your knowledge 

 of these relations, for nothing is easier than to study them, and the return for your 

 labor and capital will increase in the same ratio. 



Suppose you were to look over the 125,000,000 acres of improved land in the United 

 States and find the 500,000 acres which, according to the last census, produce the most 

 value in crops ; in what part of the republic, think you, they would be found ? Not in 

 Massachusetts, nor in New England — not in the neighborhood of any great city, nor in 

 any of the southern or western States ; but in Western New York and the Valley of 

 the Genesee. In 1850, the farmers of the six New England States reported to the Mar- 

 shals that they raised 1,080,874 bushels of wheat. The few farmers of Monroe county 

 in which I reside, reported, at the same census, 1,441,653 bushels as their last crop. 



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