248 THE NATURE AND TREATMENT OP 



ents which go to form the healthy vegetable. So that in such 

 cases the disease is general, not local ; the plant is not Jibre 

 sick, nor the cow hone sick, but in both cases — the food of 

 each being unnutritious — debility is the disease. 



It is well known that successive cultivation exhausts the 

 soil, and uses up the constituents necessary for the growth and 

 maturity of grains and fodder. Yet the pastures and ploughed 

 land might be made to yield good crops and rich harvests, by 

 depositing in the soil — in the form of animal excrement, straw, 

 wood, ashes, lime, charcoal, etc. — as much as we take out of 

 it. The soil cannot create any thing of itself, therefore an in- 

 crease in crops can only be obtained by adding more of certain 

 agents to the soil than we take out of it. 



" In Flanders, the yearly loss of the necessary matters in 

 the soil is completely restored by covering the fields with ashes 

 of wood or bones, which may or may not have been lixiviated. 

 The great importance of manuring with ashes has been long 

 recognized by agriculturists as the result of experience. So 

 great a value, indeed, is attached to this material, in the vicinity 

 of Marburg, and in the Wetterau — two well-known agricul- 

 tural districts, — that it is transported, as a manure, from the 

 distance of. eighteen or twenty-four miles. Its use will be at 

 once perceived, when it is considered that the ashes, after being 

 washed with water, contain silicate of potash exactly in the 

 same proportion as in the straw, and that their only other con- 

 stituents are salts of phosphoric acid." 



It is well known that phosphate of lime, potass, silica, car- 

 bonate of lime, magnesia, and soda, are discharged in the ex- 

 crement and urine of the cow ; and this happens when they 

 are not adapted to assimilation, as well as when present in ex- 

 cess. Supposing the cow's bones to be ^' weak," it is possible 

 that the gelatinous elements preponderate over those •f lime, 

 soda, and magnesia. 



It is a fact well known to husbandmen, that some breeding 

 cows do not come up to the standard of health, or fair condi- 

 tion, although they are fed from the cream of the crib, on the 



