ASH OF THE PLANT. 43 



tific men have been able to do is simply to take an analysis of 

 the plant and watch it, and find out what the plant itself takes 

 from the soil, what it constantly demands for its growth. When 

 we take a plant and burn it, the ashes of the plant are the 

 mineral manure which the plant has taken out of the soil, and 

 it says to us, by the ashes we get, " That is the very substance 

 we want, and must have, and will have, or we won't grow." 

 That is the answer the plant gives us, and that is the way we get 

 it. The chemist can take these ashes and analyze them, and 

 find out exactly what they contain ; and we find that these ashes, 

 as we should naturally suppose, after knowing something about 

 chemistry, came from the rocks. The granite and. feldspathic 

 rocks, when ground and analyzed, are found to contain these 

 very materials. But then, in ordinary soil, and especially in 

 our soil here in New England, we find these particles of rock so 

 coarse that many of them, even though they may be quite small, 

 will remain hundreds of years before they are crushed down 

 and dissolved. Now, that material in the shape of these par- 

 ticles, not crushed down, not dissolved, is of no more value to 

 the plant than if it were ten thousand miles from the plant. 

 The plant cannot feed upon these particles, and something 

 must be done to crush and decompose them, so that the plant 

 can get hold of them. That is the advantage that we have in 

 the West, that our soils have been crushed and pulverized so 

 finely, that these materials are given up more readily to the 

 plant than they are in this section of the country. 



Now, take aslies. You have what the plants have once taken 

 up, and it is in a very minutely divided state, and it is in the 

 state in which the plant needs it. Let us see what the result 

 is. It is said that these ashes do a wonderful work, and there 

 are several reasons why they do. Li the first place you put 

 upon the soil the very things that the plant needs, because they 

 are the very things you have obtained from plants — the very 

 things that the plants took up. That seems to be plain enough. 

 But there is more than that. In many soils, there is a tenden- 

 cy to the formation of acids, which are prejudicial to the pro- 

 duction of crops. If you put on live ashes, the free alkaline 

 is present, and if leached ashes, the sub-alkaline is present, 

 and it at once neutralizes the acids. So much is gained. 



