612 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



this, the price has fallen from 70s. sterling per quarter of eight 

 bushels, to 45s., and yet it must be very profitable to raise 

 wheat, as the land there has to pay high rents and taxes out 

 of this produce, charges from which we here are happily free. 

 Let us then hear no more of the idle story of exhausted lands 

 or of soils unable to bear crops of wheat or of any other vege- 

 tation. We are deficient, not the soil, and if we are unable to 

 make the earth fruitful for want of knowledge, let us at least 

 take care that our children shall not want it ; let us establish 

 institutions where a sound agricultural education can be ob- 

 tained. With our increasing population we may ere long 

 absolutely want here all we can raise, especially if the western 

 lands are cultivated for many years longer in the reckless way 

 they now are. 



But to our question. The scheme I propose to lay before 

 you, as 1 have said, is that the farmer shall properly store up 

 all the manure he can raise on his farm for several years, con- 

 vertir]g it into this charcoal, with the addition of all the inor- 

 ganic sails requisite, and that when applied, it may be in such 

 quantity that it shall form a permanent soil and be a kind of 

 sponge, lasting forever to absorb for the use of vegetation the 

 rich juices of the manure annually put on afterwards, which 

 juices are now, on light lands especially, either washed 

 through, out of the reach of the roots, or evaporated away 

 by the hot sun. 



It will be necessary, however, for me to enter into the val- 

 ues of the various substances the farmer must use in his heap, 

 how this must be stored, and in what way managed, com- 

 posted and carbonized, and how he must work to obtain remu- 

 nerating crops while this is going on. I fear this plan may 

 appear to many of you as absurd, but you should hear before 

 you come to this conclusion, for I am only recommending to 

 you what nature herself teaches in the plainest terms. 



What, I ask, are, or rather were, the fertile lands of the 

 west, or those of the rich valleys in New York, but heaps of 

 vegetable matter converted into a black carbonaceous or char- 

 coal soil, by slow natural combustion, accumulating and be- 

 coming consolidated, untouched by the plough for centuries? 



