324 [Assembly 



" The farmer, laboring with his crooked plough, 

 The rust-corroded javelin shall find, 



And, with wonder, view 



The giant remnants of the broken grave." 



She can also aid still more in ascertaining the most useful ingre- 

 dients in all manures, and in preserving and applying them in the best 

 manner. It will surely be much belter to have them enrich the field 

 which is to grow crops, than float off to the ocean in water, or be 

 wasted by evaporation in the air. 



The valuable assistance of chemistry is also needed more for the 

 discrimination between the different manures, suited to different crops, 

 which is so indispensable to much success, no one dressing or mixture 

 of soils being a triumphant panacea in all cases, any more than was 

 Dr. Sangrado's bleeding and hot water in all diseases. The sandy 

 plain, for example, does not demand more sand, but clay ; and of 

 course the clayey surface does not need more clay, but sand. To 

 any field, much exhausted of its silex, in forming the hard stalk of 

 wheat, rye, barley, oats, or some of the grasses, requires more silex • 

 and for the pea or bean, more potash must be added to the soil, where 

 that ingredient has been used up. It is well known that some plants, 

 like the rattan and cane, absorb so much sand, that fire can some- 

 times be struck from them, as from a flint, and that the whole color 

 and beauty of the rose comes from its iron. It is this striking feature 

 in nature, supplying different food to different plants, as to different 

 animals, which, without cultivation, causes a succession of different 

 trees on the same soil, as the pine and birch, after the oak; because 

 the earthly particles, suited to support the latter, have been absorbed 

 and exhausted, while those to nourish the former still remain. This 

 furnishes in part, also, the true philosophy and guide to enable the 

 farmer, by more careful discriminatien, to produce a better rotation 

 of different crops from the same field, a practice known to some, long 

 ago, as the age of the Roman Georgics — but imperfect then, as it 

 often is now, from ignorance of the true reasons for it. All farmers 

 are likewis^^dmonished, at times, that too much manure is used for 

 some crops, though the most common error is the other way, in apply- 

 ing too little. Since the employment of the more concentrated ma- 

 nures, like poudrette and guano, their easy and lavish use often makes 



