184 Amei'ican Quarterly Journal 



mountains, in the warm sunny regions of the south, or the cold frosty 

 regions of the north, and the laws of life which govern the vegetable and 

 animal kingdoms are the same in all latitudes and climes. The agents 

 which modify organic bodies, and under whose influence they grow up and 

 decay ; by which they are nurtured, and by which they fulfil their destiny, 

 operate uniformly the world over. Heat, light, electricity, and water, 

 awaken everywhere the dormant forces of the vital atom, and call into 

 action a principle which had lain in a state of rest in the seed or in the 

 bud : they sustain the energies of the being they have just stimulated into 

 life, and maintain its growth and development from the period of its first vital 

 movement through all the stages it has to pass to reach its maturity. The 

 laws, then, by which these changes are effected, and by which the progress 

 of all organized beings to their proper perfection may be either hastened or 

 retarded, vary not : they are fixed and stable. The glorious sun, shedding 

 his bright rays upon the mountain forest and upon the herbs of the valley, 

 transforms and vitalizes the fluids and elements which circulate in the leaf; 

 and this transformation is a necessary result, wherever the conditions of 

 sunlight and vegetation exist. It is a terrestrial law, which reigns 

 wherever vegetables grow, or wherever they are formed upon a terrestrial 

 plan. The leaves of plants turn green in the light of the sun, the yellow 

 rays of that luminary converting the colorless sap into the substance termed 

 chlorophyl; and this is a law of light. Can we break this law 1 No ! But 

 although we cannot break any of nature's laws, we may sometimes evade 

 or counteract them. We may spread a curtain over the plant in a garden, 

 or interpose a screen between the sun and the leaves of an herb ; and by 

 this arrangement, even although all other conditions necessary to growth 

 are applied, we shall notably interrupt the decomposition requisite to the 

 production of color in the vegetable tissue, and give place to a blanched, 

 etiolated, and imperfect being. But the special mode by which this and all 

 other changes are effected in vegetation are the same everywhere ; so that, 

 whether we wish to produce, or to destroy, the law is at our hand : if we 

 know the effect abroad, we are sure of the same effect at home. It is for 

 these reasons, and in them we find cause for admiration, that the modes and 

 rules of culture which are successful in one place, will be successful in 

 all other places, provided we adapt them to the varying conditions of climate 

 and situation. 



" But to return to the subject of American husbandry. We believe it 

 ought to differ from the English system in some of its specific productions. 

 The English cultivator, for instance, impelled by the humidity and com- 

 parative coolness of his climate, which favor the growth of the turnip and 

 other root crops, employs these articles very extensively in sustaining and 

 fattening his cattle. Now the American farmer is not driven to the use of 

 these watery products. Our Indian corn, or maize, ought to be the prin- 

 cipal food for fattening our domestic animals. The zea mays is the very 

 prince of vegetables : its seeds or kernels furnish, to the live stock which 

 feed on it, an abundance of oil or fat to line the cellular tissue, of fibrin to 

 enrich the blood and enlarge and strengthen the muscles, of the phosphate 



