ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 71 



although he has to sow the whole ground several times 

 over, experience has taught him, as it will us, that that is 

 the cheapest which is done the best. Let it be covered in 

 well with a harrow, and not with a bush, which last leaves 

 the soil dead, and tends to drag the seed into patches and 

 hollows. As a general rule, grass seed may be planted as 

 deeply as grain. Farmers lose much more seed from shal- 

 low than from deep planting. For although shallow-planted 

 seed vegetates sooner, they are more liable to be winter- 

 killed, or to perish by drought than those which are deeply 

 covered. 



THEORY OF MANURE. 



IT is very well known that a young orchard will not, usu- 

 ally, flourish on the site of an old one ; for the older trees 

 are supposed to have withdrawn from the soil certain ele- 

 ments necessary to their growth ; and as necessary to the 

 growth of the young tree, should it be planted there. 

 There is no "like" or "dislike" of the soil to the tree ; it 

 is a plain case of starvation. The tree needs, and the soil 

 oannot supply certain elements of its wood. 



But if, after a plant has abstracted from the soil certain 

 ingredients, the whole plant is decomposed and returned to 

 the earth, the soil repossesses itself of the lost elements, and 

 is ready to yield them up again to a plant of the same kind. 

 If the straw of wheat be burned upon the field, annually, the 

 soil would yield fine crops for a thousand successive years, 

 that is so far as the straw is concerned. But if the grain 

 is removed, and nothing resupplies the drain of phosphates 

 which it makes from the soil, the soil will in due time, 

 according to the original quantities in the soil, cease to 

 yield grain, although the straw may be admirable. But if 

 both straw and kernel were every year burned upon the 



