262 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



to contain the most valuable portion of the food ol 

 plants. But admit the fnrt, when, is the proof of 

 this portion being lost ''. \ say there is none. On 

 tne contrary, we have what 1 consider a conclusive 

 reason for believing that this food is immediately 

 given by the atmosphere to the tops of plants, as 

 more suitable to them than to their roots. My rea 

 son for this belief is the result of the following ex- 

 periment, which I have known to be repeated sev- 

 eral times. All the bark was taken off from around 

 the body of certain young trees, in a ring about three 

 inches wide, for the purpose, in the first case which 

 I saw, of ascertaining whether this process would 

 kill the tree. But, to the surprise of us all, not 

 more than a year or two elapsed before that part of 

 the body above the ring became obviously larger 

 than the part below ; and this difference in size in- 

 creased every year afterward, as I had frequent op- 

 portunities of noticing. 



Another reason why I believe that manures act 

 better spread on the surface of land than buried un- 

 der it in the customary manner, is, that, in the first 

 case, the rain-water carries the dissolved substances 

 no deeper than the roots of most of our cultivated 

 plants ; and that these substances are there held fast 

 by the earth's chymical affinity until the stronger 

 attraction of the spongioles- of the roots begins to 

 act upon them. But, in the second case, that is, 

 where manure is ploughed under as soon as spread, 

 all the food of plants contained therein being placed 

 at once quite as deep as their spongioles naturally 

 extend, and this, too, before the rains begin to dis- 

 solve it, the subsequent solutions necessarily sink 

 still deeper, and generally beyond the reach of the 

 plants for whose nourishment they are designed. 

 In no other way can I account for the long-noticed 

 and invariable superiority of crops produced by sur- 

 face-spread manure to those produced by that which 

 has been ploughed in. To me there appears to be 



