332 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



lower class. Thus a burnt haystack renders the soil beneath it 

 capable of bearing larger crops of potasli plants than would the 

 same area of soil treated with a greater quantity of potash from 

 forest production. Green manures of a high class, decomposing 

 in the soil, furnish progressed inorganic materials, and although 

 very minute in their quantity, still, from their progressed con- 

 dition, they will produce larger crops than greater quantities of 

 similar primaries from lower sources. The manure of the stable 

 owes its value to this truth. Much of the inorganic matter con- 

 tained in the manure is in so progressed a condition that the results 

 are greater than would arise from the same primaries obtained 

 elsewhere. The whole system of nature has been progressing, 

 and our forefathers could not have had many of the luxuries we 

 now enjoy, simply because the primaries of the soil in their time 

 had not been so progressed as to produce them. Soils that for- 

 merly would produce but a kale and lower class of cabbage, will 

 now grow the cauliflower. All animals, if not overfed in quan- 

 tity, appropriate such primaries from their food as are sufficiently 

 progressed by" frequent use in organic life, and discard as fceces 

 such portions as have not reached the point for assimilation 5 and 

 we have yet to see any other cause why an animal should yield 

 excretia at all, other than from excess of quantity, want of pro- 

 gression, presence of inappropriate or unrequired primaries or 

 undue relative quantities. Why is it that night-soil will produce 

 effects such as are not warranted by its analysis, and such as cannot 

 be imitated by any synthetical arrangements of similar constitu- 

 ents 1 Is it not because the food of man contains the primaries 

 in a more progressed condition than that of other animals? Ani- 

 mals are part of the machinery used by nature for the progression 

 of the primaries, and bear the same relation in their decay to the 

 supplying of pabulum for a higher class of plants to feed a supe- 

 rior class of animals, as did the rocks to the soil, the soil to the 

 lower class of plants, those to the higher, and so on to nature's 

 ultimatum, man. 



Now, let us see if we can comprehend why the chalk soils of 

 England and of the plains of Athens are not barren, as would be 

 our soil, if one-tenth the quantity of lime they contain should be 

 added to it. 



