366 
VILLAGE LECTURES. — NO. 2. 
walk upon; keep the walls dry too — (if you do 
not they are very likely to be covered with 
" gi-een, ") and then you will make things com- 
fortable. If you do employ a syringe be sure 
to use it most when vines are in flower, and 
afterwards when they are in fruit; and in the 
greenhouse, first when the flowers are opening, 
and next when the wood is ripening. When 
they are making their growth it is of no conse- 
quence. — Gardeners' Chronicle. 
VILLAGE LECTURES.— No. 2. 
The Soil and the Air Continued. — A plant is 
made up of roots, and a stem which cai'ries 
leaves. It does not live in the soil only — the 
greater part of it lives in the air. Almost the 
whole of the plant above ground is covered 
with pores, little holes in its skin through which 
it absorbs, sucks in food. Only the extremities 
of the roots have these pores by which they can 
absorb nourishment. No doubt the roots do 
take in water from the soil, and along with it 
they will take in whatever the water has dis- 
solved in it. But then, if you examine this wat- 
er, you will find very little of the matter of 
wood, or of cheese, or of corn, or of meat, dis- 
solved in it. The water which comes from our 
drains, and which is such as the roots of plants 
suck up, is indeed apparently clear and quite 
pure, very good water to drink, but none of 
us would get fat upon it if that were all we had 
to live upon. Neither, you may depend upon it, 
will a tree nor a plant get stouter and grow if 
that be all that it has to live upon. The soil 
contains quite as much vegetable matter at the 
end of a rotation of crops as it does at the be- 
ginning-; it contains a great deal more vegetable 
matter after a forest of trees has been grown 
out of it than it did when the acorns were plant- 
ed ; therefore, all this matter could not have 
been got out of the land — the water could not 
have dissolved all this matter out of the earth 
and furnished it to the roots of plants, so that 
they might suck it up and flourish upon it. No. 
The great bulk of every plant that grows en- 
ters it — not by the roots from the earth, but by 
the leaves from the air. It is the air and the 
sunshine and the rain water, not the mineral 
matter of the soil, that make our trees shoot, 
our turnips swell, and our wheat and grain crops 
ripen their seed. 
But before entering upon the argument by 
which I have to prove this, I may as well just 
refer to the idea which some people may have 
that a plant changes the matter of the soil on 
which it feeds into its own substance. It can- 
not do this; it cannot make one thing into 
another. It must have the right things giv- 
en to it, or it cannot grow; too much of one 
thing will not make up for the absence of anoth- 
er. Unless a mason be provided with the wood 
and the bricks, and the mortar, he cannot build 
the house; and neither can a plant build its 
own structure up unless it be provided with the 
right things in the right quantity. The mason 
might have abundance of bricks; but if he had 
that alone he could not proceed ; he could not 
make everything he wanted out of an abun- 
dance of only one of them. And just so with 
plants ; you must not think that they can make 
the wood, nor the seed, nor the leaves, nor the 
root, out of the earth of the soil. They have no 
power to make one thing into another; they can 
only make wood of the matter of wood ; leaves 
out of the matter of leaves ; seed out of the 
matter of seed. 
It is quite consistent with what is known to 
say that when the world was created, only sixty 
or seventy different kinds of particles or atoms, 
and a certain number of each sort were called 
into being ; and that though they were put to- 
gether in so many different forms, and though 
as time passes some of these substances thus 
formed are continually being taken to pieces, as 
it were, and decomposed, and others are -being 
built up of the pieces, yet the world is made of 
just the same number of each kind of particles or 
atoms ; the same number of pieces of each 
kind now, as it was 6,000 years ago. It is con- 
sistent, I say, with what is known, to suppose 
that not one particle has been created since — 
not one since been converted into another. 
Each is as it was when originally called into be- 
ing, and though not in the same place now, nor 
united with the same companions now as it was 
then, yet it is the same particle possessed of the 
same shape, size, and weight, and endowed with 
the same properties. 
Now, these particles are perfectly distinguish- 
able and perfectly recognisable, but I cannot 
go through the process just now by which 
the individuality and proper distinct character 
and existence of each is proved, and therefore 
you must be content to believe me when I say 
that the soil contains comparatively few of 
those particles which go to make the bulk of a 
tree, or the substance of butter, of cheese, of 
wheat, or of meat — that it positively contains 
more of them every year under good farming, 
notwithstanding that butter and cheese, and 
wheat and meat, are every year being sent off 
it to market, and that, as neither a plant, nor 
anything else can change one thing into anoth- 
er, the matter of wood, or of one different agri- 
cultural product not being in the soil in suffi- 
cient quantity, it cannot come out of the soil in 
sufficient quantity to form the building material 
of the trees and plants that grow upon the land. 
The great bulk of each came not from the soil 
but the air. 
You will see, by-and-bye, notwithstanding 
that it is quite consistent with this statement, 
that the farmer should cultivate and manure 
the land to make his plants grow ; for, though 
the soil does not provide the plant with much of 
its substance, yet it provides something which 
is necessary^to it and without which the plant 
could not live. If the plowing and harrowing 
and manuring were of no use to the crop, of 
course, no one would go to any expense in cul- 
tivation. If the air provided all the food that 
plants need, people would not labor at their gar- 
dens; they would just sow their seed, and then 
pray for the wind to blow and the rain to fall, 
and the sun to shine, till the crop was ripe; 
