IV. 



HOW TO ENRICH THE SOIL. 



November, 1849. 



GOOD cultivation depends on nothing so much as the supply of 

 an abundance of food. And yet there are hundreds and thou- 

 sands of cultivators who do not recognize this fact in their practice. 

 They feed their horses and cows regularly, because it is undeniable 

 that they have mouths and stomachs ; and experience has demon- 

 strated, that not to keep these sufficiently supplied amounts at last 

 to starvation. But, because a plant has a thousand little concealed 

 mouths, instead of one wide, gaping one, because it finds enough 

 even in poor soils to keep it from actually starving to death, igno- 

 rant cultivators appear to consider that they deserve well of their 

 trees and plants, if they barely keep their roots covered with earth. 

 They make plantations in thin soil, or upon lands exhausted of all 

 inorganic food by numberless croppings, and then wonder why they 

 succeed so poorly in obtaining heavy products. 



Too much, therefore, can never be written about manures. After 

 all that has been said about them, they are yet but little under- 

 stood ; and there is not one person in ten thousand, among all those 

 owning gardens in this country, who does not annually throw away, 

 or neglect to make use of, some of the most valuable manures for 

 trees and plants, manures constantly within his reach, and yet 

 Entirely neglected. 



We must therefore throw out a few seasonable hints, on the 

 preparation and use of manures, which we hope may aid such of 



