Observations on Manures . 
335 
*jg decomposed is a manure of nourishment, and that nothing else 
is or can be. It may be taken for an axiom, that from man to a cab- 
bage or a lichen, nothing can be converted into nutriment for the 
living fibre, but what has been a permanently component part of 
living fibre before. 
Other properties of vegetables there are, similar (rather than 
I analogous) to those of animals, which the necessary brevity of a 
short essay, will not permit to be detailed at length. It may be 
observed however, that plants like animals may be transplanted from 
one climate and soil to another, provided the difference be not very 
great, and care be taken to accustom them gradually to the change. 
Indeed, vegetables like animals will accustom themselves to the 
change in a generation or two, provided the difference be not above 
8 or 10 degrees of latitude or of mean temperature. The range is 
not yet ascertained. 
On the preceding properties of vegetables, and their analogies 
to animals, may all the agricultural doctrine of manures be well 
■founded. These analogies have been remarked by others, but 
their application in this respect has not been heretofore sufficiently 
observed. 
Animals differ from vegetables in having a more extended 
sphere of locomotion. The animal (cases nearly zoophytical, 
excepted) can move the whole of his body from one place to another 
....a plant can only move its roGt-fibres and its branches. The con- 
volvuli, and other parasite plants, are in some degree exceptions ; 
but the general rule is, that the immovable centre of a plant’s situ- 
ation is the place where the germ falls, or the seed or plant is set 
with intent that it should remain. Hence the use of that kind of 
manuring which consists in the admixture of soils of various depths 
and adhesion, for the mechanical purpose of keeping the plant 
steady. 
II. Of the climate and soil. 
No experiments have been made to ascertain with precision the 
bounds of latitude or temperature which prohibit the naturaliza- 
tion of exotic plants. In France, Young has marked the lines of 
the maize and the vine culture In this country maize grows 
tolerably well from lat. 42, and beyond it to Georgia. Wheat is 
not so good and productive south cf Virginia, as in the middle 
states. The latitudes of cotton and rice, are not yet exactly ascer- 
tained. Coffee has not yet had a fair trial in cur southern states, 
ixqrthc sugar cane. Much indeed yet remains to be done in this 
