No. 144.] 461 



out of a thousand can inform you, as they have never attempted 

 to learn what the component parts of the manure or plants con- 

 sist of, or the conditions of moisture, warmth or light; and until 

 they do turn their attention to these matters, they cannot be called 

 vegetable physiologists or agriculturists. The same process will 

 not produce straw fit for Leghorn bonnets, and good wheat upon 

 the same plant ; in the first instance, there must be little or no 

 nitrogen in the soil, and an abundance of silica; and in the second, 

 a due share of both. We know that animals, fish and birds, may 

 be artificially grown to a large size, and made to produce fat, 

 bone, or great strength, by peculiar food. Jouce, for the sake of 

 experiment, induced an ordinary calf to grow so rapidly, that at 

 the age of two years old, it weighed nearly two thousand pounds. 

 Children fed upon arrow root, may grow fat ; but become exces- 

 sively weak for the want of bone and muscle forming food. 



By feeding geese with charcoal dust, mixed with their food, you 

 may induce their livers to enlarge to such an extent as to cause 

 death in a very short time. I have increased the vital activity of 

 plants to such an extent by specific liquid fertilizers, as to induce 

 a squash to reach two hundred and one pounds weight; a melon 

 sixty ; a cucumber six feet in length ; corn fourteen feet high, 

 and by electricity, a tomato has borne three crops of fruit for me, 

 and ripened them in thirty days; these facts are all notorious, and 

 have been many years in print. 



The development of the trunk, foliage, blossoms, and fruit of 

 trees, is dependent on peculiar conditions, which the agriculturist 

 must discover, as the foundation of the laws of agriculture is 

 based entirely on them. If we intend our plants to develope 

 themselves to a maximum size, we must supply them with the 

 necessary conditions. 



De Saussure says, a plant which has just broken through the 

 ground, and a leaf just burst open from a bud, furnish ashes by 

 incineration, which contain as much, and generally more of alka- 

 line salts than at any period of their life, showing how early it is 

 necessary to supply our plants with these saline matters. 



