No. 199.] 325 



plants grow too rapid, and too high for their strength, and thus, like 

 some mushroom politicians, they are apt prematurely to break down. 



Next in importance, for its influence on crops, and deserving still 

 more attention than heretofore, is a proper degree of moisture. 

 Water being the medium for supplying much other matter t> vegeta- 

 tion, and itself constituting a large portion of the weight of most 

 plants and fruits, amounting from ten to fifteen per cent, even in the 

 dryest and hardest wheat, it should be more and more an object to 

 regulate moisture well. One of the secrets of nature, in often pro- 

 ducing much on a soil with a sprinkling of small stones — one of her 

 beautiful compensations for an apparent evil, is the greater moisture 

 retained by means of them — most of our best natural soils, when 

 analyzed, being found to contain from seventy to ninety parts out of a 

 hundred, of siliceous matter. Granite scales or debris, scattered 

 sparsely over some fields, will increase moisture, by preventing eva- 

 poration, and will enrich them like a fertilizing manure ; and some 

 other rocks, like gypsum and lime, independent of their peculiar 

 virtues, operate in a like manner, rather than, as once said, by a few, 

 of lime, "burn up the land." If the 'granite decompose any, it will 

 enrich also, by its potash, so indispensable to the perfection of some 

 plants. 



Irrigation is another means to furnish additional moisture, where 

 needed, and though some employed ever since the days of the bard 

 of Mantua on his paternal acres, it might be still more, with much 

 advantage, as might a more free use of straw as a dressing j and as 

 might deiper ploughing, independent of any aid from Professor Espy 

 to create showers artificially. While on the other hand, where greater 

 dryness is desirable, it will be useful hereafter to look more to shallow 

 ploughing, and to practice more the ditching and draining which are 

 so well known to be the great instruments to remove surplus mois- 

 ture, and thus increase the quality of the crops, warm the soil, and 

 improve the health of all near, instead of leaving them to breathe out 

 a biicf and feverish txiBltnce amidst deadly miasma or malaria. 



Much is. yet to be accomplished by closer attention in using the 

 best seeds for planting ::v.i\ for fruit ; and the increase of the latter 



