4 
THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR, 
AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS. 
The finest Agricultural add.''ess of the year 
was made by Dr. Daniel Lee, at Buffalo. We 
select the following extract, because it will be 
read with as much interest by every intelligent 
resident of the town as by those engaged in ag- 
riculture. After showing that plants derive 
ihier chief nourishment from the carbonic gas 
and ammoniacal gas in the atmosphere, and that 
these gases are thrown in the atmosphere in in- 
exhaustible quantities by the decomposition of 
animal and vegetable matter and by breathing, 
he proceeds thus ; — Louisville Jour. 
Gentlemen: — I have in this glass, water ta- 
ken from a well near my residence in this city, 
such as is used by my family and others. You 
see it is quite clear, although 1 suppose it holds 
in solution among other earthly ingredients, a 
portion of lime. Every time a person breathes, 
he expels from his lungs carbonic acid, which, 
as I have told you, is the appropriate food of 
plants. I will now breathe into this water and 
see what, if any, effect will be produced. You 
see the water is changed to a milky whiteness. 
You will recollect the question to be solved 
was : how to seize upon the carbonic acid ex- 
pelled from organic beings, in order to change 
it back again into new plants and animals. — 
By understanding the laws of chemical affinity, 
I have seized upon a valuable earthy manure, 
lime, which robbed the soil of an indispensa- 
ble element when it left it; being dissolved in 
rain water, in its passage from the surface of 
the ground through the earth to the well, from 
whence it was taken. On the other hand I 
petrified in this white powder, which is the 
carbonate of lime, a portion of my brain, nerves, 
muscles, fat, bones, &c., which may be convert- 
ed into wheat, corn, and potatoes in a day ; or 
may be kept without change, a thousand years. 
The peculiar value of this artificially form- 
ed carbonate of lime over the chrystalized car- 
bonate that forms about one-eight part of the 
earth’s crust, is this : that the vital action of the 
roots of plants will decompose an impalpable 
power like this sooner than fragments of lime 
rocks in the soil. Hence slaked lime is more 
valuable as a manure than unburned limestone. 
No sooner, however, is this carbonate decom- 
posed by the action of a living growing plant, 
than the free lime, whose carbon has gone to 
build up a vegetable, takes up another, and 
still another portion of carbonic acid. At night, 
plants consume no food, or very little, but di- 
gest what they have imbibed during the day. 
The chemical affinity between lime and car- 
bonic acid accumulates vegetable food at the 
roots of plants during their sleep at night, and 
when the light of day awakens their vegetable 
appetite, the lime that was free at sun down has 
prepared for them a good breakfast, for aught 
we know,may be, as in this instance, a portion 
of a human eye, or a human heart. When, 
however, the lime is deprived of its carbonic 
acid, it is soluble, as you have seen, in water; 
which, sinking deep into the earth or running 
off from its surface, growing plants are n'bbed 
of this source of food. The only remedy for 
this is to apply a little lime evenly over your 
grass, and your cultivated fields; and to apply 
it often, if your wheat or grass fail to answer 
yourjust expectations. True economy in feed- 
ing plants, like the feeding of domestic ani- 
mals, consists in giving them just what they 
will eat up clean, and no more. Much of the 
excess of food will be dis.solved in water, and 
^carried beyond the reach of your growing crops, 
’still more will escape into the air, by the com- 
bined aciJion of heat, light, and electricity. 
I have stated to you that most plants require 
in addition to water and carbon, a portion of 
nitrogen. This also comes from a gaseous 
substance in the atmosphere. Although nitro- 
gen forms the largest element in the air, (79 per 
cent,) yet it has been pretty well settled that 
plants do not obtain their nitrogen by decom- 
posing common air, but derive it from ammo- 
nia, which is furnished to the atmosphere in 
great abundance by a woild of decomposing 
vegetable and animals. It is the ammonia 
that escapes from putrifying substances that 
causes their oflensive smell. Now, again, 
comes up the practical question : how are we 
to collect this highly volatile gas, and trans- 
form it at the cheapest rate, into wheat, beans, 
cheese, and wool, of which it is an important 
element 1 Rain water has a strong affinity for 
ammonia ; which is a compound of 14 parts of 
nitrogen and 3 of hydrogen. Water at 50 de- 
grees will absorb 650 times its bulk of this veg- 
etable food. Every rain, then, brings consider- 
able q an titles of it to the ground. It is the 
ammonia in snow that makes it valuable as a 
manure ; and it is the ammonia in rain water 
that causes it to purify in some degree like an 
animal substance, when water is permitted to 
stand in warm weather in a close vessel above 
ground. The first fall of a rain after a long 
drought is much the richest in this gas. Being 
extremely volatile it escapes into the air again 
after a warm shower much quicker than water 
evaporates. What then will aid the cultivator 
of plants, and seize this volatile ammonia, as 
lime does carbonic acid, and hold it permanent- 
ly about their roots, in such a shape that it will 
feed them all they need, and no more 1 For an 
excess of this stimulating alkali, like an ex- 
cess of salt in our food, will destroy life instead 
of supporting it. 
Common Charcoal is the cheapest, and there- 
fore the best material to apply to cultivated 
fields for this purpose. It will absorb 90 times 
its bulk of ammonia, and will give it out slow- 
ly to the vital attraction of the roots of plants. 
Most of you know that charcoal will correct 
the taint in meat ; will purify rain water in a 
suitable cistern,, so as to render it the purest 
water for culinary purposes. Such charcoal 
should be often renewed in filtering cisterns, 
and when saturated with ammonia, is an ex- 
tremely valuable manure. The libera' appli- 
cation of this well known substance to the 
wheat fields in France, has mainly, in con- 
nection with the use of lime, added within the 
last ten years 100,000,000 bushels to the annual 
crop of wheat grown in that kingdom. The 
chat coal should be sown in May, at the rate of 
75 bushels per acre, well pulverised. This sub- 
ject is one of vast practical importance. By 
studying the science of agriculture, you may 
grow fifty bushels of good wheat on any acre 
of your land, I have good reason to believe, ev- 
ery year, bating of course extreme casualties. 
You all know that, a single kernel of wheat, 
will, sometimes, w'hen its fecundity is highly 
stimulated, send up 20 stalks, and that each 
stalk will bear a head containing 100 kernels. 
Here is a yield of 2,000 fold. Nature then has 
rendered it practicable to harvest 2,000 bushels 
of good wheat from one bushel of seed. The 
most sceptical among you will not deny that 
2,000 kernels have been produced from one ker- 
nel, and that the same natural causes that pro- 
duce such a result in one instance, will ever 
operate, at all times, under like circumstances, 
in the same manner. Hence it is but reasona- 
ble to say that nature is quite as willing to pro- 
duce 50 bushels of good wheat on an acre of 
ground every year, mark me, if her laws he 
obeyed, as she is to ^ow fifty bushels of weeds 
every year on the same ground. 
We cannot forbear annexing the following 
remarks on the management of cattle, and the 
preservation of health : 
Gentlemen : — 1 was brought up to the severe 
labor of cultivating a poor soil. I have sown 
many a ton of plaster with my own hand; and 
many a moonshiny night have I followed the 
plough, that an ox-team might escape the heat 
of June, in breaking up large summer fallows. 
I mention these personal incidents as an apolo- 
gy for claiming to know something of the^rac- 
tice, as well as a little of the science of rural 
economy. 
Permit, then, a practical agriculturist,' who 
has devoted the best energies of his mind for 
years to the study of agricultural chemistry, 
vegetable and animal physiology, to say to 
those of you who are wool-growers, that by 
keeping the animal warm in winter, cool in 
summer, and quiet throughout the year , by 
stimulating with the elements of wool, ihe or- 
gans that secrete this valuable covering of the 
sheep, it is practicable to clip six pounds of wool 
as the product from the same amount and value 
of raw material that now yield you but three 
pounds. To accomplish this important result, 
this physiological change in the products of this 
living machine, you must quiet the action of the 
lungs. These expel from the system every mo- 
ment, night and day, a needless quantity of ani- 
mal food, which, under more favorable and other 
circumstances, might have been converted into 
wool, tallow andmuscle. Mark me. There is 
a positive loss, a needless throwing away of 20 
to 50 per' cent of the food in wintering all do- 
mestic animals, which is literally burned up by 
nature, in this cold climate, to keep their blood, 
and the whole animal, some 40 or 80 degrees 
warmer than the temperature of the air with 
which they are surrounded. It is not merely the 
hay, oats and corn in domestic animals, and the 
bread and meat in man, which are consumed 
like the animal oil in a lamp, to warm the sys- 
tem, that are lost; but, by inhaling a cold and 
dense atmosphere, and bringing a larger amount 
ol oxygen gas into the lungs, and through them 
into the blood, than is needed, inflammations 
are generated, ending in consumptions, alike in 
man and beast. An animal is an electrical bat- 
tery or machine. It is practicable, so to excite 
the organs that form fat in a pig, in a positive 
degree; and to so quiet all the other organs of 
the animal by a kind of negative electricity, 
that the animal shall transform nearly all of its 
food that can be converted into fat, into that 
well known substance. The same remarks will 
hold ti uc, in a good degree, when applied to the 
secretion of milk in cows, and the secretion of 
wool in the capillary organs of the shesp. On 
the other hand, it is quite as easy to make a pig 
secrete an enormous amount of bone, and an 
enormous amount of gristle: to have a hide as 
thick as a board, a nose like a plow beam, ears 
like sides of sole leather, and legs like an ele- 
phant! 
Of all the complicated machinery in warm- 
blooded animals, the action of the lungs is the 
most important. It governs the action of the 
heart and that of the digestive organs. And the 
action of the lungs is governed, in a good de- 
gree, by the condensation from cold, and expan- 
sion from heat of the air taken into them by res- 
piration. The condensation and expansion ever 
varies the quantity of oxygen that passes thro’ 
the lungs into the circulating blood. Hence i£ 
is, that in cold climates, and in cold seasons ol 
the year, this excess of oxygen excites inflam- 
matory diseases. Hence it is, that in warm 
climates and in warm seasons of the year, when 
the minimum of oxygen is taken into the system, 
less carbonic gas is expelled from the lungs, and 
the excess of carbon in the lood, being the prin- 
cipal element of bile as well as fat, stimulates 
the liver — an important organ, and the antago- 
nist ol the lungs — to a copious and undue se- 
cretion of bile. Thus it is that the human race 
—and domestic animals partake of the same in- 
juries in a less degree — are evermore afflicted 
with bilious diseases in summer, and inflam- 
matory complaints in winter. 
As the preservation of health is a matter 
that deeply concerns us all, and living, as we 
do, in a climate subject to sudden and extreme 
changes in temperature, I have thought a lew 
remarks upon the prevention of disease, would 
not be unacceptable to those that I have the hon- 
or to address. 
In addition to keeping the body warmly clad 
in winter, it is important to keep the blood well 
supplied with carbon, which will combine with 
the excess ol oxj^gen taken into the lungs by in- 
haling condensed air, and thereby prevent its 
chemical attack upon the living tissues of the 
peculiarly exposed lungs. This supply of car- 
bon in the blood can be secured by eating meat, 
and nutritious vegetable food, far more ol which 
