78 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



let the present condition of your soil, compared with what it 

 once was, answer. I will let tliose old, forsaken, desolate, pine 

 barrens of Virginia, once fertile, and the seat of productive 

 baronial estates, answer. I will let you answer, as year by year 

 you shovel and tug, and cart to your fields those very ingredi- 

 ents of the soil which your fathers carted off and dumped into 

 the rivers. 



Through the providence of God, water comes to you as to 

 your fathers, in the showers of heaven, in the early and the 

 latter rain. There is as much carbonic acid and nitrogen in 

 the air now as then, but the decomposing organic matter, the 

 remains of falling leaves and decaying herbs collected through 

 untold ages, are gone. The soluble salts have been carted 

 away and have not been returned. There is silica enough, but 

 it is not in a soluble condition. There is potash enough but it 

 is held fast in the feldspar of the granite and sand, and gravel, 

 which are but slowly decomposed. Leach your ashes and take 

 out the potash, and then apply them to these sandy soils, a 

 large proportion of which is silica, and you will, perhaps, double 

 the crop of corn, because the silica in the ashes is in a soluble 

 state, ready to be taken up by the roots, and that in the soil is 

 not. But unleached ashes are better, for they contain potash 

 which is not only itself an element of vegetable food, but will 

 unite with the silica in the soil, and render it soluble. Ashes 

 are valuable fertilizers, but we advise you never to burn a plant 

 for the sake of the ashes it produces, never to burn it to get it 

 out of the way, if you can compost it and cause it to decom- 

 pose. In burning a plant, the carbon is given off into the air 

 and adds but a moiety to the whole whence it must be washed 

 by the rain or absorbed by the leaves ; but in the decomposition 

 of the plant in the soil, all the elements of food are evolved 

 around the root, and when there is a good supply, the plant 

 takes it up in quantities limited only by the activity of its 

 organs. One element in abundance is better than no fertiliz- 

 ing. The abundance of the one may stimulate the plant to 

 uncommon energy in absorbing others not so abundant. But 

 the plant grows best when all the elements of food are abun- 

 dant. No animal will fatten while he must run to seek his food. 

 We put the ox in the stall and the pig in the sty and help them 

 to all they want. 



