252 [Assembly 



that many other crops would be also. Water should never stand 

 in or on any land; but the more it oozes through it and evapo- 

 rates from it, the richer it leaves it in inorganic salts. Irrigation 

 is the counterpart of deep under-draining, and is worth as much 

 now as evei it was in the day of Egypt, or Nineveh, or Babylon. 



The rain that falls in regions near the sea is slightly impregna- 

 ted with inorganic salts. Panira says " Rain water contains air, 

 carbonic acid salts, and organic matters." On the authority of 

 Liebig, it contains ammonia. What there is cf these matters is 

 favorable to an increase in the saline constituents of the soil. 



It is a fact that different portions of the ocean differ in saltness, 

 and yet I am not aware that within the period of recorded obser- 

 vation there has been any appreciable progressive increase in the 

 quantity of tliese saline constituents. If such an increase were 

 to be established, it would be interesting: to connect with it the 

 idea that geology seems to inculcate — that all the land has been 

 once submerged, and that nature resorts to this method of reno- 

 vating worn out and leached out continents. 



In addition to these resources, there are bedsof marl, of plaster 

 of paris, and of limestone, to which the ingenuity of man may 

 resort. There are deposits of muck in the eddies of the streams, 

 and it is rumored that extensive beds of lime phosphates have 

 lately been discovered. Nor would I, sir, by any means depre- 

 ciate the use of inorganic manures — the superphosphate of lime, 

 bone dust, or any other. I mean only to oppose, and that strenu- 

 ously, that premature generalization of the principles of Liebig, 

 that leads to an entire dependence on that class of manures. 



An acre of poor land, a clayey loam, after being plowed deep 

 and sown to oats, was top-dressed with ten two-horse loads of 

 leached ashes. The crop of oats did not amount to twenty bush- 

 els. It laid over the next season to meadow, and brought a little 

 more than an average crop of clover. The third season an ave- 

 rage crop of grass, mostly timothy, was plowed under the 20th 

 of June, and sowed to buckwheat. This crop grew so large and 

 was sown so close, that it lodged, and was trod down and jilowed 

 under with a furrow one foot deep by measurement. The next 



