32 MR. Oliver's address. 



certain single agricultural commodities, decide, before pur- 

 chase, whether any particular farm in the market, — or whether 

 the soil of the County or of the State, were suitable for your 

 purpose. 



Again, having a superior agricultural education, you may 

 easily decide, if 3'ou find a farm, which for satisfactory cause 

 of locality and neighborhood, you would desire to purchase, 

 whether it lack the elements, any or all, necessary to the ob- 

 ject you have in view, and whether it can be made to receive 

 them, and so be brought into the right condition. I have read, 

 somewhere, an account of the purchase of a farm, by the Hon. 

 Reverdy Johnson, — near Baltimore, — the soil of which was re- 

 duced to the meanest condition of impoverishment. The last 

 crop of corn raised upon it, yielded the infinitessimal quantity 

 of one peck to the acre. Not knowing what to do, nor getting 

 from the agriculturists about the neighborhood, any thing 

 more reliable than guess-counsel, he applied to a chemist, — not 

 again to practical farmers, for they had failed him, — but to a 

 chemist, whose vocation was not in the field, and about the 

 soil, but in the laboratory, and the chemist visited the place, 

 took portions of the soil and analyzed them. He found a 

 plenty of magnesia, of lime, of potash, iron and organic mat- 

 ter. Yet one thing it lacked. One element of a fertile soil 

 was wanting, — and that one absent, all the rest were nothing 

 worth, — even as gunpowder without the kindling spark. 

 There was no trace of phosphoric acid. He directed that the 

 biphosphate of lime should be applied, and this having been 

 thoroughly done, the farm in fervent and substantial gratitude 

 for this application of the proper food to its starved and ex- 

 hausted frame, poured out its rich wheat at the figure of twen- 

 ty-nine bushels to the acre. Now this curer of a bad and al- 

 most hopeless soil, as it seemed to the common observer, was 

 a book-farmer, nay, rather a book-worm, who had never he&'a 

 at the plough-tail, never handled a rake, nor swung a flail. 

 What would you have done, Mr. Anti-book-farmer, but poked 

 your way towards the cure in the dark, trying experiment af- 

 ter experiment, — perhaps hitting the nail on the head, or per- 

 haps hitting and bruising your own fingers, — that is, wasting 



