PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 425 



plants. All this as well as the possibility of the inorganic con- 

 stituents of the soil being dissolved, was stoutly denied by my 

 advisers. God alone could tell where the ashes of the plants 

 came from, but they had seen plants grown in cotton, and in sand 

 that was insoluble. Plowing to any such depth as twelve inches, 

 they pronounced to be idle, and other notions of mine concerning 

 subsoil plowing and under draining lands that were not wet, were 

 simple nonsense. To sum up, if I did not withdraw these foolish 

 propositions, I might consider my race about run among my 

 friends at the Institute, who must regard me as little better than 

 a lunatic. 



Of course I was obliged to answer them, " Gentlemen, if I am 

 mistaken, I shall have to fall by my mistakes." 



I did so fall ; and for many years my name was consequently 

 left off fron the agricultural board, &c., of the Institute. How- 

 ever, I knew my opponents were honest in their views. Some 

 years afterwards, when Liebig's book began to be talked about, 

 Gen. Tallmadge read a few chapters from the first copy received, 

 at a meeting of the Farmer's Club. "Why," said he "this is 

 the same kind of nonsense that Mapes was talking to us five 

 years ago." 



Recently, Prof. Way and Prof. Johnson, of England, had a 

 severe quarrel at the meeting of the Scientific Institute ; one 

 claiming that he had discovered, eighteen months before, that 

 alumina had the power of retaining ammonia, and the other, 

 claiming to have discovered it himself two years before. 



I convinced myself that Liebig was, in his theories, right, if 

 he referred to deeply cultivated soils, and that he was wrong, if 

 he referred to soils as ordinarily cultivated ; and I felt equally 

 assured that the English chemists, who opposed Liebig, would be 

 proved to be wrong whenever he had leisure to contradict them. 

 After waiting eleven years, he, two years ago, published a pam- 

 phlet of 140 pages, in which his theory is proved so completely, 

 that from that hour not one line has been written in successful 

 contradiction of his statements, while volumes might be compiled 

 from the writings of his converts, who had previously entertained 

 directly opposite views. To Liebig is due the credit' of the dis- 

 covery, and in urging my own views, I do so, fully accepting him 

 as the father of a theory, made plain and palpable by him, while 

 I had merely recognized its truth, without furnishing the ration- 

 ale which supported it. A gentleman who has published an agri- 



