36 ESSEX SOCIETY. 



has beeome dry, then to turn the furrow upon it. It is the opin- 

 ion of your Committee, that neither should be adopted as a uni- 

 versal practice. On sandy and dry lands, we must think that 

 the crops turned in when green Avill work the greatest benefit. 

 On clay and stiff lands, the dry may do as well ; the season 

 of the year, when the work is done, to justify a little variety. In 

 the midst of summer, the crop should be used when green; 

 late in the fall, it may do as well when it is dry. There is one 

 serious objection, which will often operate against working the 

 crop when matured and dry ; in most instances, the year will be 

 consumed by the process ; while, with the other practice, a crop 

 can be raised the same season, to be gathered into the storehouse 

 or barn. 



In order to account, in a manner at all satisfactory, for all the 

 phenomena connected with this subject, the Committee feel 

 obliged to resort to the opinion that there is, in living plants, what 

 may be called a self-providing power — a vegetable, or, if the 

 term be better liked, a chemical potency, by which, in their 

 urgency, they can transform materials, not before calculated to 

 give them nourishment or support, into food suitable for them 

 to feed upon ; that they can gather for themselves manna in a 

 vegetable wilderness, and draw their water from the flinty rock. 

 The manner in which plants, under the most unpromising cir- 

 cumstances, do live and thrive, is often highly interesting, often 

 truly astonishing, and, upon any other principle than that just 

 mentioned, not easy to be accounted for. To this principle, too, 

 may we not safely refer many of those great changes which 

 have often taken place during a long process of cultivation, each 

 successive year producing some changes, which, being carried 

 forward by the successive crops, at length have resulted in a 

 most entire and important alteration, in consequence of which 

 vegetables and fruits grow with luxuriance, where formerly the 

 greatest labor and attention were required to secure to them 

 even a sickly existence '? 



Plants do more than simply provide for themselves : they act, 

 as it were, prospectively, lay up nourishment for those that may 

 come after them. Having seed in themselves, they put up in 

 store for those that are likely to proceed from them. If one crop 



