188 THE EFFECTS OF 



last lock is consumed, it is very certain, that unless the 

 stack, or the food, is replenished, the ox, when the stack 

 is consumed, will hunger and die, for want of nourish- 

 ment. The organic matter in the soil is the stack of 

 hay, and the crops are the ox. As long as the organic 

 matter continues in sufficient quantity, the crops will 

 thrive ; but the moment the organic matter is exhausted, 

 or is deficient in quantity, the crops, like the ox, will 

 pine and die, for want of food. The herdsman takes 

 care to provide fresh food for the ox before the stock of 

 hay is exhausted ; and the prudent farmer will take like 

 precaution to provide for the coming wants of his crops. 

 Providence has imparted fertihty to the soil for the benefit 

 of man, to whose management He has intrusted it ; and 

 He has endowed him with the faculty, and provided abun- 

 dant means, of perpetuating that fertility. How reckless 

 and improvident do we consider the young spendthrift, 

 who wantonly squanders his paternal inheritance. He 

 not only injures himself, and perverts the noble object of 

 his being — that of doing good to his fellows — but he does 

 injury to others by his bad example, and robs his chil- 

 dren of their inheritance. The contemner of Nature's 

 laws, who wantonly wastes the bounties of Providence, 

 by a reckless, exhausting system of husbandry, does injury 

 to himself and others, of a hke nature, though not perhaps 

 to equal extent, nor in so glaring a manner, as the spend- 

 thrift who squanders, in vice and folly, his paternal estate. 

 Crops exhaust the fertility of the soil in proportion to 

 the nourishment they respectively draw from it. To keep 

 up our comparison with the animal kingdom, we may 

 hken our grain crops to our cattle and horses, which are 

 gross feeders, and consume a large quantity of food ; and 

 our grass and roots to sheep and swine, which consume 

 less, which thrive on comparatively scanty and coarse 

 fare, and in a measure requite us for their food, by their 

 intrinsic value, and by the fertility which they impart to 

 the soil. The hog and the sheep, the grass and the roots, 

 will live upon the pasture or soil which will not sustain 

 the more gross feeders — the grain and the cattle — yet, 

 like the latter, they will only thrive well when well fed. 



