SOMETHING WILL GROW. 159 



in a state for the application of plaster of Paris or sulphate of 

 lime, because it will do no good ; it will do no good where there 

 is the appearance of iron in your land, because there is already 

 too much sulphate there. Tiiis land you can tell by simple 

 observation, without any chemical tests. Look at the vegeta- 

 tion. There is one axiom of chemistry which you can always 

 remember, and that is, that acids turn vegetable greens to red. 

 I presume you will recollect having seen red plants at the side 

 of the road where the land was well cultivated, and you will 

 see upon the trees that grow upon such land something of the 

 same appearance. It is the upheaved sulphur that is upon our 

 land, and it takes so much manure and so much alkali to 

 neutralize it that successful farming is nearly impossible. You 

 may plant that land with corn, and put the ordinary quantity 

 of manure on it, and it will not go to seed ; but with sufficient 

 manuring it may be brought up to be equal to the best land in 

 the world, by being opened to the rains and having the sulphate 

 washed off. 



Another thing you will notice about sour lands. You will 

 notice sorrel. That will grow for a few years, and be followed 

 by white clover. It is the pioneer of something better. It is 

 the pioneer for such plants as we want to feed our animals with, 

 containing starch. The farmers in many parts of the country 

 have left this old land. They did once cut off the bushes, but 

 they found little profit in it. The feed was gone ; the plants 

 that grew contained very little nutriment, and consequently; 

 they have let it grow up to wood, and they have made money 

 by it. An acre of land that produces a pretty good crop of 

 wood will grow a cord a year. We should be thankful that 

 we have no barren land in Massachusetts. We say our land 

 is exhausted. It is not exhausted. It is exhausted for particu- 

 lar crops, but something will grow. The cone-bearing plants 

 will grow first on this sour soil — the pines, the hemlocks, the 

 spruces, the birclies. These are an older race of plants than 

 the maples, the chestnuts, the oaks; and these are filling your 

 land for another rotation, if you choose to call it so. If you 

 will wait thirty years, and then burn that land over as the early 

 settlers did, you will renovate your land. I cannot recommend 

 that way. But a great many of the farmers in my neighbor- 

 hood have asked me what they should do with this land, and 



