ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE NUTRITION. 57 



can the west expect to escape a similar calamity, if she 

 is alike unmindful of her duty and her interest. 



But, though late, we are beginning to see our errors, 

 and to atone for them, by adopting a better system of 

 farming, — by improving the bounties of Providence. We 

 are renovating some of our worn-out lands ; and begin to 

 find, that, under a better management, we can not only 

 restore them to primitive fertility, but greatly increase 

 their productive properties. We have begun to call into 

 exercise those faculties, long dormant, which have profited 

 the manufacturer and the artisan, and to study, and to 

 apply to husbandry, those natural laws — that science — 

 which must ever govern its operations, wherever its labors 

 are wisely applied. Instead of getting a bare reward for 

 labor, with a diminution of fertihty, as in former times, 

 we are augmenting the capacities of the soil, and doubling, 

 trebling, and quadrupling its products. We are now de- 

 monstrating, that agricultural pursuits are not only the 

 most healthy and useful, but that, judiciously managed, 

 they are a means of wealth, and of independence and hap- 

 piness, which few other employments in life confer. 



To point out some of the prominent features of this 

 better system of husbandry — whereby the fertility of the 

 soil is progressively improved, the labors of the husband- 

 man better rewarded, and the country at large more 

 benefited, than under the system pursued by our fathers, 

 will be the subject of subsequent chapters. 



CHAPTER VII. 



ANALOGY BETWEEN ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE NUTRITION 



It may not be inappropriate here, with a view of 

 bringing the process of vegetable nutrition and growth 

 more directly home to the understanding of the unlearned 

 reader, to notice some of the analogies which exist be- 

 tween the animal and vegetable kingdoms. 



Animal and vegetable matters constitute the food alike 



