No. 144.) 499 



yet succeeded in combining the elements of our organic molecule. 

 This is the work of God ; a constructive work that he effects 

 through the mysterious processes of his power, and it has only 

 been granted to us to hasten or delay for our own purposes, by 

 agricultural practises, the disorganization of this work. All W6 

 can do is to save what he gives us, and make the most of it. 



In the same way that the rootlets of growing plants remove the 

 atmosphere of carbonic acid with vvhich decaying manures are 

 surrounded, does caustic lime produce the same effect. This 

 acti(m of it is certainly not economical, and its use must depend 

 on some further evidence of its character as a saline iugredient of 

 the soil. 



All vegetable substances that are fed to animals, lose something 

 of their worth as manures, by passing through their bodies, lose 

 something more, too, than the difference in weight between the 

 dried food of the animal and its dried excrements, for the waste 

 matter is of a lower grade in organization than the food was. 

 Green crops contain, after all, the greatest possible amount of 

 manure, for they contain all that there is ; and asida from the 

 importations of gaano, and the natural deposits as of marl, are 

 the sources of all manures. When the salts are in sufficient quan- 

 tity for common purposes, and yet the ground is deficient in crops, 

 as it is in many of the newer settled portions of the Union, they 

 are the best resource, the expense being nothing, but the interest 

 on the worth of the land and an extra plowing. As green crop, 

 as of buckwheat or of clover, cannot be put through any process 

 of composting or feeding to animals, that will add anything to its 

 aggregate value as a manure; so the great resource of our farm- 

 ers in conformity withtheseviews, is to ihe sod. Clover will grow 

 almost anywhere; and a crop of it plowed under will bring, with 

 the help of a little v.ood ashes, a crop of corn. Even if the 

 clover is cut, the roots and stumps will, if plowed under, leave 

 the ground in better order than they found it. This practice puts 

 a price of $10 and |12 a bushel on red clover seed. Of the 

 manures used in the State of New- York, I am satisfied that more 

 than half is sod, and that no implement can ever supersede the 

 plow in general use, that fails to turn under, this substance. 



