492 [Assembly 



ON THE FOOD OF PLANTS. 



Dr. Waterbury — I applied the manure of a season, that madfe 

 from three cows.~and a horse, to five-eighths of an acre of '•' old 

 field," and planted it wilh corn. The resulting crop was a little 

 over one hundred bushels of ears. The next year I applied the 

 manure of the same animals to twice the quantity of adjoining 

 land of the same quality, and harvested only about seventy-five 

 bushels of ears. There was nothing in the management or in the 

 different character of the seasons to which this difference in the 

 crop could be attributed, and the inftrence that I drew at the 

 time was, that in the second part of the experiment I had ex^ 

 tended my manure over too much ground — that, if my manure 

 had been put the second year on only five-eighths of an acre, that 

 the same labor that was expended on the surplus five-eighths 

 would have tilled and plowed in a green crop on the same ground, 

 and that the whole ten-eighths would have been in better order 

 the next spring for farming purposes. Off of the first five-eighths 

 that was highly manured I took the next season a paying crop of 

 turnips — some six hundred bushels — while the quality of the 

 ten-eighths was not such as to make it advisable to expend the 

 next year the amount of labor on it that is incurred by that crop. 



The amount of manure in the country may be considered as 

 nearly a fixed quantity. The variation produced by the importa- 

 tions and by the return from the great cities of the phosphates is 

 scarcely appreciable, and hardly to be taken into account — the 

 drain of inorganic matters that is steadily running downward and 

 outward, from the mountains to the sea. And yet I have taken oc- 

 casion to show from statistics, on former occasions, that notwith- 

 standing this drain there is no diminution in the productive power 

 of the land in the State of New-York, and to infer that the same 

 is true of the land in the northern and eastern portions of the 

 Union. The agricultural condition of China and some of the 

 older European countries fortifies this inference, while the peculir 

 arities in the habitudes of the surflice water of the earth show us 

 how it is probably true. 



