126 PLAIX AXD PLEASANT TALK 



cook knows what things are reqitired for bread ; he selects 

 these materials, compounds them to definite proportions — 

 adding, if any one is deficient ; subtracting, if any one is in 

 excess. Raising a crop is a species of slow cooking. Here 

 is a compound of su5h materials (called wheat) to be made. 

 Nature agrees to knead them together, and produce the 

 grain, if the farmer wall supply the materials. To do this 

 he must understand what these materials are. Suppose a 

 cook perceiving that the bread was wretched, did not know 

 exactly what was the matter; and should add, salt, or flour, 

 or yeast, or water at hap-hazard ? Yet that is exactly what 

 multitudes of farmers do. They find that their fields yield 

 a small crop of wheat. They do not know what the matter 

 is. Is the soil deficient in lime, or sand, or clay ? Is mag- 

 nesia or potash lacking ? Perhaps they do not even know 

 that these things are requisite to this crop. "The land 

 must be manured." Now, manure on an impracticable soil, 

 is medicine. Of course if the farmer prescribes, he must 

 tell what medicine, i. e. Avhat manure. Is it vegetable mat- 

 ter or phosphates ? alumina or silica ? Suppose a doctor 

 says : " You are sick and must take medicine," without 

 knowing what the disease is, or what the appropriate 

 remedy ; and so should pull out a handful of whatever there 

 was in his saddle-bags and dose the wretch ? That's the 

 way farming goes on. " The ten acre lot wants manure." 

 To the barn yard he goes, takes the dung heap, plows it 

 under, and gets an enormous crop of — straw. Nitrogenous 

 manure was not what the soil wanted. He has added 

 materials which existed in abundance already; but those 

 elements, from the want of ivhich his crop suflfered, have 

 not been given it. The land is sicker than it Avas before. 

 It languishes for want of one element, it sufliers from a sur- 

 feit of another. "We are prepared to sustain these observa- 

 tions by a reference to authentic facts. 



Massachusetts, a few years ago, was not a wheat-growing 

 State. Cautious farmers had given up the crop, because 



