488 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



[August 



they were grown, tlie essential elements of 

 tlie soil are drained at a rapid rate from an 

 enormous extent of country ; and by modern 

 improvements in agriculture, which aid in 

 the production of large crops, the deterio- 

 ration of the soil proceeds more quickly 

 than it has ever done. 



Klippart, Corresponding Secretary of the 

 Ohio State Board of Agriculture, &c., &c., 

 laments in his recently published work, 



The Wheat Plant," as follows: "Several 

 years ago I became aware of the fact, that 

 wheat, the staple crop of Ohio, was annu- 

 ally diminishing in its yield per acre ; that 

 in less than fifty years the average product 

 was reduced from thirty to less than fifteen 

 bushels per acre !" 



Numerous other writers, some quoted in 

 the work of Liebig before us, bear the same 

 melancholy testimony even in relation to the 

 land in some of our youngest States — we 

 will not take space at present to copy it. 



During the examination of soils from 

 various parts of Kentucky, by the writer, 

 in the prosecution of the Geological Survey 

 of that State, a comparison was made, by 

 minute chemical analyses, between the com- 

 position of the virgin soil and that of some 

 of the same locality which had been culti- 

 vated for a number of years ; and in seventy- 

 one cases out of seventy-nine the soil of the 

 old field showed a marked diminution in the 

 essential mineral elements. 



Practical or empirical husbandry has 

 been endeavoring, since the commencement 

 of history, to solve the great problem. How 

 to maintain the fertility of the soil in culture. 

 Thousands of experiments in farm opera- 

 tions and manures have been made ; and, 

 to a certain extent, this empirical process 

 has been crowned with success. Experi- 

 ence early taught the fanner to rest his 

 fields; to give them a fallow; during which 

 some of the valuable elements locked up in 

 the harder particles of the soil were set free 

 by slow disintegration, and the crop of 

 weeds, by collecting from its depths the 

 scanty nutritive materials, enriched the sur- 

 face somewhat by their decay, so that larger 

 crops of the useful products could subse- 

 quently be obtained. He learned by ex- 

 perience also to send from his farm only the 

 more concentrated and valuable of its pro- 

 ducts ; to raise green crops, with which to 

 feed stock; to cultivate the deep-rooted 

 clover, which would bring to the surface the 

 valuable ingredients of the sub-soil; to] 



carefully preserve all his straw for the litter 

 of his animals, and return' to the land all of 

 the fertilizing materials he could thus ac- 

 cumulate as barn-yard manure. But even 

 this, like the fallow system, whilst appa- 

 rently keepirig up the fertility of the soil, 

 gradually and certainly exhausts it, if, after 

 all, the crops of grain, or the animals of the 

 farm or their products are annually exported 

 from it. The land is starved to death in 

 the end by this system, whether crops be 

 carried ofi" from it without the application 

 to it of any manures — or whether abundance 

 of manures, produced on the farm itself, is 

 annually applied to it to keep up its surface 

 fertiHty : the difference being only one of 

 time. 



The writer was amused, a short time 

 since, by noticing in the Cosmos of the 

 Abbe Moigno, under the uphonious name of 

 Auiopliagie, a new method, proposed to the ^ 

 French Academy of Science, by. M. Le 

 Docteur Anselmier, of retarding death by 

 starvation, and of making it less painful; 

 which consisted in opening the veins of the 

 starving individual, and feeding him regu- 

 larly on his own blood. Just such starva- 

 tion is the cultivation of soil by means of 

 manures made on the land itself, whilst 

 valuable products, containing a large amount 

 of the essential mineral elements are an- 

 nually exported from it. ■ ' 



When this system is so far improved as, 

 in Flemish husbandry, to return to the land 

 not only the manure from the barn-yard, 

 but also that from the dwelling-house, the 

 process of deterioration is greatly retarded. 

 But experience has finally taught the far- 

 mer, who sells off" from his farm his pro- 

 ducts, the advantage of applying to the soil 

 fertilizing materials from other localities, 

 such as lime, marl, sea-side sand, shells, sea- 

 weed, fish, wood-ashes, plaster of' Paris, 

 nitrate of soda, nitre, salts of ammonia, 

 bone-dust or super-phosphates, guano, &c. : 

 and by the judicious use of such articles as 

 these, especially of the two latter, aided by 

 improved processes of agriculture, England 

 has, at a great expense, it is true, main- 

 tained the fertility of her fields, and even 

 greatly increased her crops within the last 

 fifty or sixty years. But besides the im- 

 mense amount of bones. Chili saltpetre 

 (nitrate of soda) &c., &c., imported into 

 England for this purpose, we are told (Cos- 

 mos, January 13, 1860) that 5000 tons of 

 guano are sold in England per week, at a 



