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that modern chemistry has rendered the greatest 

 service, not merely by analyzing the products 

 yielded by the decomposition of plants, and 

 therefore defining the nature and relative amounts 

 of the various constituents of their food, but also 

 by so treating a number of substances which oth- 

 erwise would remain useless, or positively inju- 

 rious, as to work them up into special manures 

 adapted to the requirements of particular crops. 

 In Europe the manufacture of artificial manures, 

 as they are termed, has for some time assumed 

 gigantic proportions ; and it is encouraging to find 

 that in several of the larger cities of this Conti- 

 nent, similar manufactures have already made a 

 successful commencement. Many English farm- 

 ers annually expend as much money in purchas- 

 ing artificial manures and cattle food, as the 

 amounts of their respective rents. This, with a 

 thorough and clean system of cultivation, will 

 account for their high average produce ; fifty or 

 sixty bushels of wheat per acre being now grown 

 on land which a quarter of a century ago only 

 produced twenty-five or thirty. AYe sometimes 

 read with feelings bordering on incredulity, of j 

 the enormously large crops raised under the sys- 

 tem designated " high farming ^ but there can be 

 no doubt that in a country like England, an ex- 



