13 



ESSAY. ±KJ 



combinations. He feeds his plants as he feeds his 

 animals. A pigeon, fed on food in which there is no 

 phosphate of lime, dies ; its bones become too frail. The 

 stalks of grain, grown on land where silicate of potash 

 is wanting, break down under the weight of their own 

 ears. Oats grown on sand treated with nitric acid, will 

 not blossom ; and an oak is dwarfed to the size of a 

 fern by starvation. 



The soil of New England is stony; but our ancestors 

 reared whole families on the stoniest of it. The plough 

 of the son glides smoothly through soil from which those 

 double walls and huge moles of innumerable cobble- 

 stones have been taken, at the expense of the strength 

 of the ancestor. Should we and those who come after 

 us, practice their patient industry, our soil might get rid 

 of the reputation of being stony. It is rough ; but the 

 Swiss peasants build like eagles on the hights of the 

 Alps, and bring up their children on giddy cliffs where 

 none beside, but the chamois, climb; and in some places in 

 Italy, the women carry up soil in baskets placed on their 

 heads, to form terraces on the sides of the mountains. 

 It embraces sandy plains; but the plains of Belgium 

 were sandy, but by the application of agricultural sci- 

 ence, this sand, once almost as unpromising as Cape 

 Cod, now sustains a population sufficient in numbers to 

 quash the theory of Malthus. 



In draining a marsh, we add to the available surface 

 of the world. The Duke of Devonshire, who drained 

 the Bedford Level, and the Emperor of France, who* 

 drained the marshes of Salone, were public benefactors- 



*While in exile, the Emperor was asked why he paid so much attention 

 to the study of hooks on draining: " I am fitting myself to become Em- 

 peror of France," said he, " and one of my first acts shall be to drain the 

 marshes of Salone," and so it was. 



