<t FERTILIZERS. 



In felspar and mica we have the great natural store- 

 houses of potash ; the former containing seventeen per 

 cent, and the latter nine per cent. It has been estimated 

 from tests on a small scale, that, in soils from granite 

 taken to the depth of twenty inches, on an acre of land 

 the potash from the felspar alone is over one million two 

 hundred thousand pounds. What this means may be in- 

 ferred when we consider that it has been computed that 

 two cubic feet of felspar contains sufficient potash to 

 supply the wants of an acre of young oaks for five years. 



Not only is the soil of the earth to be supplied with 

 mineral matter, but the ocean also, to enable her to furnish 

 food for her many forms of marine life, both animal and 

 vegetable. Water, percolating through the soil, with the 

 help of the carbonic acid it holds in solution, which it has 

 derived mostly from the air, dissolves an infinitesimally 

 small portion of mineral ingredients, and carries them to 

 the streams and rivers ; and these run on, with their invisi- 

 ble freight of soda, potash, chlorine, and other minerals, to 

 the ocean. Here, nothing but water being evaporated, the 

 mineral strength increases ; and in the kelps, sea-mosses, 

 rock-weed, and eel-grass which we gather along the shore, 

 and carry back on the land to manure our farms, or in 

 the waste fish we handle, we find the identical manurial 

 elements that exist in the various land plants which we 

 feed to our animals. And we find, moreover, that these 

 elements are about equally well proportioned for plant- 

 food. 



The rocks of the little State of Massachusetts have 

 locked up in them, it is safe to say, all the potash, the -sili- 

 con, the iron, the alumina, the soda, necessary to supply 

 the population of the whole earth, from now to the end of 

 time, with all of these ingredients that enter into their 

 daily food, provided they were made soluble, and were 



