No. 151.] 387 



to run over the yard, where it becomes putrid, loses its nitrogen, 

 which passes off in the shape of ammonia, its salts are carried away 

 by rain, and nearly all its valuable properties are evaporated by the 

 atmosphere. Thus the ammonia and alkaline salts, the most valu- 

 able portion of the manure, and without which neither plants nor 

 seeds can exist, are lost. It is the want of these substances that 

 causes our lands to produce miserable crops, and sometimes entire 

 sterility is the result. 



A farmer should on no account sell his hay or straw, without re- 

 turning an equivalent in manure; if he does, his crops will decrease, 

 and finally his land will cease to produce. His constant study should 

 be to increase his manure heaps, by every means in lis power, and 

 to become acquainted with his soil chemically, which knowledge 

 may soon be acquired. If your soil requires potash, use ashes; soda, 

 lime and magnesia may be purchased — ammonia and hartshorn are 

 the same thing. Nitric, muriatic and sulphuric acids are extensively 

 sold in commerce. Phosphoric acid may likewise be purchased of 

 the apothecary. All these substances are indispensa le in a soil, to 

 produce either the cereal grains, cruciferous, or leguminous plants. 

 Buy them, mix them with 300 times their weight of mould, and 

 apply them to your plants; you will be astonished at the result. By 

 this means I was enabled to raise large crops and heavy grains, long 

 before the works of Sprengel, Johnston, Liebig, &c., were published. 



Bear one thing in mind: all the manures you use to improve your 

 soils and to become useful to plants as food, cannot be of the least 

 service to them except in a liquid state; that is to say, if you present 

 your growing crops with boneS", fish, lime, potash, soda, muck or 

 compost from your stable yards, they are all dissolved by some pro- 

 cess of nature, before the plants can absorb them. That is the reason 

 plants grow so much more rapitily when liquid manure is used upon 

 them, than when a dry compos t ion is made use of. 



Davy ineffectually tried the finest impalpable powder of dry char- 

 coal upon plants, in hopes they would imbibe it, but it was fruitless. 

 He found that no manure could be taken up by the roots of plants, 

 unless water was present. The early Egyptian philosophers falsely 

 asserted that water was the only food of plants. They probably 

 came to that conclusion by noticing the mage fertilizing properties 

 of the waters of the Nile, when it overflowed its banks. 



Veitsays: "plants are nourished only by sucking in the nutritious 

 substance, in a fluid or gaseous form, out of the earth or air, by 



