31 



and remember to keep always a barrel to dissolve your 

 bones and shells in moistened ashes ! 



Next comes the proper application of manure ; and here, 

 what the envious hour forbids me to speak, that I shall 

 ask you, brother farmers, to read in print at your homes. 

 And with the application of manure, rises the considera- 

 tion of the analysis of soils, the doctrine of specifics, and 

 so on. And here, I catch again a faint muttering in the 

 corner, from my gruff old friend, to whom book-learning 

 and book-farming w^ere so distasteful, in which, however, 

 I am able to distinguish the phrase ' ' new-fangled hum- 

 bugs." Allow me, however, to say, my friend, there is 

 no humbug about it. How are you to know, I pray you, 

 "what elements your soil needs unless you have ascertained 

 by analysis what it already contains. I grant you there 

 may be careless examinations by unscientific men. But, 

 would you forever be carrying coals to Newcastle, the 

 mother of coals, — or ship lime to Thomaston ? What 

 would you think of a farmer, who was carting ashes on to 

 a tract of new land just burnt over, spreading gypsum 

 on a calcareous soil, or teaming ditch mud on to a peat 

 meadow ? It may be, that a certain piece of land only 

 requires one single additional element, lime or potash, 

 carbon or ammonia, perhaps, and has a surplus of the 

 other elements necessary to vegetable growth ; what use 

 then, of wasting your time, labor and manure in adding 

 to that surplus, when a little plaster, a little superphos- 

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

 and the only thing required. Some elements, such as the 

 phosphates for example, that 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. Wheat fields producing at the rate 

 of seventy-five bushels to the acre — potatoes, one of 

 which makes a meal for a large family ; beets, bigger 



