SAVING OF MANURE? 105 



phate, or a little ashes, perhaps, would be amply sufficient, and 

 the <inly thing required? Some clement,-' — Bucb as the phos- 

 phates for example, those abounding in virgin soils — have been 

 well nigh exhausted in lands long tilled. What marvellous 

 tales they tell of the prolific character of the new soil of 

 California! "Whcatficlds producing at the rate of seventy-five 

 bushels to the acre ; potatoes, one of which makes a meal for 

 a large family; beets bigger than babies ; carrots the length of 

 tall men ; with cabbages of sufficient size to take the place of 

 a farmer's family dinner table ! What equally wonderful stories, 

 and all true, they told, a quarter of a century ago, of Ohio and 

 the West ! And what wheat crops, what great healthy po- 

 tatoes, were raised by our fathers here in New England 

 formerly, which we can't raise now, and that at an era, too, 

 when they despised all manure, and when it was poison to the 

 land ! And where is it gone, this land, that yielded of yore the 

 rich harvests of wheat ? Over the back of old roan, or the bay 

 mare, our grandsires carried it in bags. It has all gone to mill 

 years and years ago. Out of it have been manufactured the 

 heavy oxen, the bones and bodies of milk-giving cows ; from it 

 the strong stalwart forms of our fathers were well knit to- 

 gether, and the rounded, seemly shapes and glowing cheeks of 

 fair matrons and gentle maidens. Gone to mill, ground and 

 eaten up has the land been, long ago — those elements of it, at 

 least, strong for wheat, and productive of the rich full cars of 

 heavy grain, and none of it was ever carried back and replaced. 

 And the question arises, How shall we bring back this scattered 

 soil? Plainly by ascertaining what these lost elements are 

 that have thus been carried away and consumed, and returning 

 them or their like again to the soil. An old farm is like an 

 old wagon or an old house. I don't know that it is ever quite 

 so good as when it first epmes from the maker's hand. 



But we have got the old house; and what shall we do with 

 it? Let us examine it thoroughly and sec. It is strongly 

 built, and the sills are still good ; but the old roof may have to 

 come off, and the clapboards be renewed; or perhaps a good 

 coat of paint is all that is needed to make it quite as spruce 

 and genteel as the little light-framed thing there over the way. 

 Some grand old houses do I know, here and there, made over 



