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XVI. — On increasing our Supplies of Animal Food. By 

 John C. Morton. 



Prize Essay. 



Agriculture is an art which, by its plants and its animals, 

 enables us to gather up and assort those atoms or particles 

 existing in the air and soil and in vegetables, respectively, which, 

 thus assorted and combined, are food for man. 



That is the theory ; and the practice bears it out : for in reality 

 the farmer does but direct a succession of processes whose effect is 

 to detach these particles from useless positions and connexions 

 in earth, air, and water, and from comparatively useless positions 

 in the substance of plants, in order, with such materials, to erect 

 the structure of the ripened crop in the one case, or of the 

 fattened animal in the other. His every act of cultivation, by 

 assisting the action of atmospheric solvents, loosens these atoms 

 from previous combinations in the soil — his manuring is a direct 

 addition to them — his draining furthers their more ready trans- 

 mission to the roots of his plants — the hoeing by which he 

 stimulates the growing crop accelerates their assimilation into its 

 substance ; all the details of preparation have for their aim the 

 easiest and most economical collection of these particles for the 

 use of man, either as vegetable food or as meat on the bodies of 

 fattening animals. 



These remarks may be too general, but they will serve as an 

 introduction to our subject, by showing — what, however, is evi- 

 dent, almost at first sight without them — that increase of animal 

 food, as of every other agricultural product, is to be looked 

 for in the promotion of an increased fertility of the soil. It 

 is true that our produce of meat depends much on our animals 

 being of the largest growth in their best parts and of rapid growth 

 throughout — much on their being fed on well -selected and 

 rightly-prepared food in warmth, and comfort, and health — and 

 much on those crops being grown which best supply this food, 

 and those kinds of each which are most productive of the parts 

 required ; but it is the soil itself* whose substance furnishes that 

 of the plant in the first place, and that of the animal in the end ; 

 and it is to the fertility of his fields that the farmer should first 

 look who aims at increasing their productiveness in this as in any 

 other respect. 



For this reason I venture to depart somewhat from the order 

 in which the Society has dictated the subject, and postponing 

 consideration of the lean stock supplies, and of other statistical 



* I do not forget that the greater part of a plant is supplied by the air : but I 

 may overlook that here, as the consideration of it would not affect the argument. 

 VOL. X. 2 A 



