496 



NEW ENGLAND FARRIER. 



Nov. 



CHEMICAL FERTILIZBHS. 



Can lands be made fertile ■without the application of 

 barn-yard manure? 



T the late meeting of the 

 "Editors' and Publishers' 

 Association," at Haverhill, 

 at the farm of Dr. Nichols, 

 who is a chemist as well as 

 farmer, allusions were sev- 

 eral times made to eome of 

 the growing CBops then on 

 the farm as having been 

 produced eiitireiy without 

 the aid of fermentative 

 manure. From an intimate 

 acquaintance with Dr. 

 Nichols, and his reputa- 

 tion as a scientific and upright man, we have 

 no doubt that his statements in regard to these 

 crops are entirely trustworthy. 



Hoping that Dr. Nichols will, at some 

 future time, inform us of the processes he pur- 

 tues with his chemicals in securing crops, let 

 us at present look a little in detail at the mat- 

 ter, to see whether we, as farmers, have power 

 to restore exhausted lands without the applica- 

 tion of bara-yaid manure. 



Food which has been fed to stock, such as 

 grass, hay, grain and vegetables, and passed 

 through a state of combustion is now, and 

 probably must continue to be, the principal 

 source of fertiliziDg material on the farm. 

 The question to be settled is, simply. Is there 

 any way of restoring lands exhausted by long 

 cropping, or of bringing lands into a state oi 

 fertility that never were cultivated, such as 

 swamps, stiff, sterile clays or barren lands, 

 without using materials from the barn-yard? 



Dr. Nichols declares there is, and that he has 

 fields which have produced fair crops for seven 

 years in succession without fermentative ma- 

 nure; gardens tilled with fruits, vegetables 

 and flo(vers, and graperies whose luxuriant 

 burdens vie with the vineyard products of 

 ancient EscqoI. 



We cannot follow out the doctor's modes of 

 fertilizing ; that must be done by the chemist ; 

 the technical names of the articles used, the 

 quantities, and time and manner of applica- 

 tion, are not known by us. 



By one process or another, we do believe, 

 however, that all lands may be brought into 

 a produciive state ; that He who created all 

 things never intended that there should be 



tracts so utterly lacking in recuperative power 

 as to defy all the genius of man to raise them 

 from their native poverty. We believe that 

 blowing sands, even Arabian deserts, can be 

 brought into fertile fields of waving grass and 

 corn. 



The question of profit in so doing would be 

 decided by the necessity existing that such 

 lands should be made productive. It was found 

 profitable to pump out a lake in Holland and 

 bring 40,000 acres into a high state of fertility, 

 and to reclaim half a million of acres in Lin- 

 colnshire, once covered with coarse grasses, 

 but now teeming with the finest wheat crops in 

 England. Circumstances must decide for us 

 whether we reclaim or not. 



Many of our farms- have a repulsive aspect, 

 because certain pieces near the buildings are 

 considered irreclaimable, and are left from 

 age to age, the receptacle cf cast-oflf things, 

 unprotitable, sometimes unhealthy, and always 

 a blemish upon the landscape. Or, it may be 

 suppo ed that such lands, if reclaimed, would 

 be at a cost which would not prove remunera- 

 tive. That would depend upon circumstances. 

 If the occupation of such lands saved travelling 

 to remote parts of the farm to cultivate and 

 bring home the harvests, it would justify a 

 very considerable outlay per acre to reclaim 

 them. 



The first step in making lands productive 

 without the aid of barn-yard manure, would 

 be to drain them, wherever dainage is needed. 

 Then the atmo.'^phere would commence the 

 process of enriching at once. 



The next step would be to attend to the 

 physical or mechanical condition of the soil. 

 What we mean by this is the texture of the 

 soil, whetbejT fine or coarse, compact or loose, 

 heavy or light. 



A soil must he fine, because the elements of 

 nutrition are only available to the roots of 

 plants in a liquid form. Those nutritious 

 elements do not travel in the soil ; they are 

 stationary there, and remain inert and without 

 value until acted upon by other agents, if 

 the potash, for instance, that ought to be dif- 

 fused through the soil of a rod of ground, 

 were in a mass in the centre of that rod, it 

 would have little influence toward bringing a 

 good crop. The result would be similar, we 

 think, in making bread. If the fermenting 

 substance were placed in a single'lump, it 



