414 . TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



away ; the same ingredients are there ; they are simply altered 

 in condition. 



We take a phosphatic rock, and a bone, heated to redness, and 

 pulverize them, and submit the powders to a chemist, and he will 

 say there is no diiference. But place them before a cow having 

 the bone disease, and she will lick up the bone dust and be 

 cured ; if her calf be toddling by her side, because its bones are 

 gelatinous, and deficient in phosphate of lime, it will be relieved 

 in a few days, by the use of the bone dust by the cow. The in- 

 stinct of the cow appears to be superior to the knowledge of the 

 laboratory ; she will not touch the pulverized phosphatic rock. 

 If you mix it with her food and pour it down her throat, it will 

 pass from her without being assimilated at all. 



You may find farms where the soil is made up in part by the 

 debris of phosphatic rock, like many of those at Hurdstown; 

 and we find that burned bones, treated with sulphuric acid, are 

 the best manure that can be used upon that farm, yet its soil 

 is replete with native phosphate of lime. 



Therefore, I claim from this, and from many other circum- 

 stances, that a knowledge of the constituents of the soil, irres- 

 pective of the conditions of those constituents, is no guide to 

 the farmer. 



As one means of ascertaining the condition of any particular 

 soil, render a portion to a fine powder, and boil it for twenty 

 minutes in dilute acetic acid, then make an analysis of the super- 

 natant fluid, and you will get those things that are in a condition 

 to be appropriated by plants. Such an analysis might be useful 

 to farmers. The old method is not of any avail, unless in adding 

 some constituent which proves to be altogether absent from the 

 soil, he supply it from a factory waste or from organic decay ; he 

 will then improve his farm, because he will use progressed con- 

 stituents under the same name, but difierently conditioned. This 

 is the reason why a single gallon of ashes, resulting from a cer- 

 tain quantity of barn-yard manure, incinerated down to an ash, 

 has a dozen times the value for raising a crop, of the same 

 amount of chemically similar constituents in the soil. 



We are often puzzled to know, when we look over an analysis 

 of a manure, why it has furnished results so very superior to 

 those obtained from other manures. Who does not know the 

 difierence between the action of the human fseces, and that of the 

 lower animals ? The former has ten times the value of the latter 



