JOHN P. NORTON'S ADDRESS. 569 



the straw. Now the grain, as you all know, is generally sold 

 off, while the straw is made into manure, and returned to the 

 soil. A constant draft upon the phosphoric acid of the soil is 

 thus kept up, and that body is therefore, in a great number of 

 cases, the first to give out ; as it fails, the grain crops begin to 

 fail also, and this, although there may be quite an abundance 

 of all save this single substance. 



Much has been said of late years, and with justice, as to the 

 remarkable effect of bones in bringing up the land where grain 

 crops are cultivated. A few bushels of bone dust per acre, in 

 some parts of Connecticut, have been found to produce as large 

 crops of Indian corn, as the soil bore when it was first ploughed. 

 This effect is owing to the fact, that bones contain a very large 

 proportion of phosphoric acid ; they supply therefore just the 

 substance of which the soil has been more particularly ex- 

 hausted in the course of cultivation. 



For want of such knowledge as this, plaia and simple as it 

 appears when once explained, thousands upon thousands of 

 tons of bones are annually thrown away or neglected. In 

 some districts they are collected to go to Europe, for the Brit- 

 ish farmers well know their value ; in other places, they are 

 gathered to make glue, or bone black, but scarcely anywhere 

 for the most valuable purpose of all, their application to the 

 soil. The farmer sees his grain crops diminishing every year, 

 and the ordinary dressing of manure no longer produces the 

 effect that it formerly did ; in order to get a heavy crop he has 

 to use so much of it, as to take away a large share of his profits. 

 If he knew that on such land, in nine cases out often, there is 

 a special deficiency which can be supplied by the addition of 

 eight or ten bushels of bone dust, he would be able to obtain 

 large crops again, and at the same time could not fail to give 

 credit to science, for the information which enabled him to pro- 

 duce such satisfactory results. 



Every farmer, by taking a little trouble, can collect a consid- 

 erable quantity of bones on his own premises. Bone mills, 

 however, are scarce, and the best way is to dissolve them in 

 common oil of vitriol, that is, sulphuric acid, and thus apply 

 them in a state of fine division. Sulphuric acid is a cheap sub- 

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