PLANT LIFE ON THE FARM. 
CHAPTER I. 
‘PLANT-NUTRITION : THE WORK AND THE MATERIALS. 
‘Introductory remarks.—What plants do and how they do it.—Receipts. 
— Expenditure. — Accumulation. — Transformation. — How plants 
feed.—Influence of temperature.—-Water and the machinery by 
which it is supplied and distributed.—Protoplasm.—Cells and their 
contents.—Ingress and movements of water.—The first stage of 
natrition.—Diffusion.—Osmosis and the requisite conditions for it. 
—Saturation.—Varying degrees of, according to ‘the nature of the 
liquid.—Amount absorbed.—Supply and demand.—Differences of 
composition of plants grown in the same soil, how explained.— 
Continuous change.—Nutritive value of water.—Nitrates; agency 
of Bacteria. — Potash. —Sulphur. — Phosphorus.—Iron.— Lime,— 
Principles of manuring.—Power of selection. 
He who can make two blades of grass grow where only 
one grew before is universally looked on as a benefactor 
to his kind. No one will dispute his title to our grati- 
tude ; but at the same time it must not be overlooked 
that the claims of him who can make one grow where 
none at all existed before, are even greater, because the 
difficulties to be overcome are more formidable, for where 
one exists already it is relatively easy to bring about its 
increase. 
In any case, it is clear that, before either problem can 
be satisfactorily solved, as full a knowledge as possible of 
all the conditions requisite for the process must be in 
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