VILLAGE LECTURE. — NO. 1. 
341 
the young tree increasing in size, and if he 
should live long enough, he would ultimately see 
the old tree with its trunk, its branches, and its 
twigs, containing perhaps 40 or 50 tons' weight 
of wood — a result of the life which was resi- 
dent in that little acorn. Where did it get that 
wood? The roots of the oak grow downwards 
in the earth to a great depth — do they find its 
woody matter there? They also spread on the 
surface to some extent, but do you think that 
there is enough of the woody charcoally mat- 
ter there to furnish the material of that great 
tree ? It was a poor clay when the acorn was 
planted, and no one has been near the place 
since to supply the growing plant with the mat- 
ter it wanted. We may suppose the tree to 
have stood in a forest near which no dung cart 
ever went, so that no supply of food for the 
plant could have reached it beyond what exist- 
ed when the seed was planted, and then the 
soil was very poor, and contained none of the 
material which has since appeared in the stem 
and leaves, and branches of that great tree. 
How did they obtain it ? The thing certainly 
appears difficult of explanation. 
Take the case, too, of any of our common 
crops — of our grass lands, for instance. Let 
us imagine the case of a dairy farm of 100 
acres; we may suppose it to be able to main- 
tain a herd of 30 cows. What will such a farm 
produce in a year ? Suppose it to be good land, 
able to keep a stock of good sort. Perhaps I 
shall not be far wrong if I put the produce of 
a cow at something like 3£ cwt. of cheese, 
and 30 or 40 lbs. of whey butter every year ; 
and besides this, there may be some bacon 
made from the waste of the dairy. Well, then, 
a farm of 30 dairy cows will yield nearly five 
tons of cheese, and eight cwt. of butter in the 
year, besides this bacon. That quantity of but- 
ter and cheese are exported annually from that 
extent of grass land. Now, where did that butter 
and cheese come from ? Have they been made 
out of the substance of the cows ? They are 
as heavy now as they were. It has not been 
made at the expense of the cows — any more, 
indeed, than the wheat or the barley, which 
comes from the threshing machine, is made at 
the expense of the machine. The cows are 
merely the machines by which the cheese is 
made out of the food they eat, and just as the 
wheat is in the rick that is being threshed, so 
the cheese resides in the grass that is being 
eaten. Well, then, where does the grass get it 2 
From the soil, do you think? Just consider; 
take a hundred years — what has been added to 
the soil of that farm during that period? Hardly 
anything ; the farmer may perhaps have bought 
some bran and some meal every season for the 
pigs ; but then he has sold the bacon made by 
his purchases,. so that the farm has lost as much 
as it has gained, in that respect. He has bought 
no manure. It will not do to say the farm con- 
tinues to yield the grass because of the manure 
that is added, for none has been added to the 
farm, none has been brought on the farm. 
Manure, has, no doubt, been added to the fields, 
but none has been imported from without the 
farm, and yet, five tons of cheese have been ex- 
ported every year ; and how has that great 
draught upon the farm been maintained with- 
out loss? The manure that is applied to the 
field helps the grass greatly ; but it cannot 
supply the cheese I speak of ; for you must ac- 
knowledge that the manure is just what remains 
of the grass after the cows have taken the but- 
ter and cheese out of it, so that every year, 
the land is robbed of so much cheese; that is, 
if the cheese be in the soil. But can you be- 
lieve that it is? Can you believe that every 
year, the soil of this farm is the poorer by five 
tons of cheese than it was ? Why, how long 
has it stood this waste ? If we suppose that it 
has been yielding at that rate during 1,000 years, 
there must have been 5,000 tons of cheese in 
the soil of that farm — 50 tons of cheese in every 
acre of it, at the beginning, and if anything, the 
farm is more fertile now than it was then — full- 
er of cheese, no doubt, than ever; so that for 
all we know, there must be thousands upon 
thousands of tons of cheese in it still. Ah ! but 
that explanation cannot stand; we cannot be- 
lieve that the wood of our trees, nor the cheese, 
or the butter of our dairy farms comes out of 
the soil. Where do they come from then ? 
Now, before attempting to answer this ques- 
tion, let us take the case of an arable farm. 
Suppose we take our own, at for instance. 
It contains about 270 acres of land — off 120 
or 130 acres of it, every year, we cut a crop of 
wheat, which may average from 32 to 36 bush- 
els of wheat per acre ; and besides these, 4,500 
or 4,600 bushels of wheat, we sell annually, 
probably, ten or eleven tons' weight of beef, 
mutton, and bacon ; that is, the animals we sell 
off, are, on the whole, heavier by that weight, 
than they were when brought on. We buy 
some 100 or 200 bags of meal and linseed as 
food for the live stock every year, so that 
much is added to the soil every year, and 
that may account for 500 or 600 bushels of 
wheat we sell off; but where do we get the 
4,000, and where does all the beef and mutton 
that we sell, come from ? It will not do to say 
that it comes from the manure ; for set a watch 
upon the enterance gate of the farm, and count 
what goes in and what comes out of it in a year; 
hardly any manure goes in, and you will find 
that 4,000 bushels of grain go off the farm 
in a year, and you will find that ten or eleven 
tons' weight of meat go off the farm more than 
comes on it in the year. Where does all that 
food come from? The question is, whether or 
not it can be supposed to come from the soil. 
During the past ten years, we must have 
sent off the farm 30,000 or 40,000 bushels of 
wheat, and 100 tons of meat. I take our own 
case as it is, the only one I am perfectly ac- 
quainted with ; but any cultivator of the soil 
will, if he looks back a few years, have to ac- 
knowledge the same remarkable truths in the 
case of his own farm. Do you think that all 
that bread and beef came out of the land ? Why, 
the land is richer and better after all that has 
been taken out of it than it was before ; and if 
it be kept in cultivation for years to come, it 
