38 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Syringe the whole house each day, and sprinkle the 
doors to maintain a humid atmosphere. 
Vines—Commence forcing Grape, ff, with a temperature 
o( 40°. to 45°., which may gradually be increased to 50°. 
See Grape article on another page. 
Water—Give daily, as plants absorb more moisture 
during a vigorous growth, which we expect to find at 
t.iis season. Evaporating pans, filled with water, should 
e placed in different parts of the house. Morning is the 
besi time for a thorough watering. 
MANURES—CHAPTER II. 
Nothing connected with improved soil cul¬ 
ture is more important to be understood 
than the best methods of saving and apply¬ 
ing manures. We believe that ninety-nine 
farms out of a hundred contain an abundance 
of fertilizing materials, did the proprietors, 
or tillers, know how to husband and use 
them. To gather and impart information on 
this topic is one of the leading objects in all 
our labors. The present series of articles 
are not designed for “ easy reading." While 
we aim at as much simplicity as possible, 
we expect many who peruse them will need 
to read slowly, carefully ; in short, study 
them. We ask any one who omitted to read 
and understand the first article, in the Janu¬ 
ary number, to now go through with it again, 
even twice or thrice, if necessary.* We 
there stated the substance of the popular 
chemical theory of manuring, with some 
objections to it. 
In order to get at what we consider to be 
the true theory and practice of manuring, let 
us inquire : 
HOW DO PLANTS GROW I 
By plant we mean a tree, a stalk of grass, 
of corn, of any grain—in short, any thing 
that grows from the soil, for the process of 
growth is the same in all plants. 
Take an apple tree for example: The 
seed is placed in the ground near the sur¬ 
face, where it receives air, moisture and 
warmth. Within the seed is a little germ 
which starts into growth. It sends forth, 
into the substance of the seed itself, little 
roots or fibres, which absorb portions of it, 
and carry them into the shoot still remain¬ 
ing within the seed. This increases in size 
and length, and bursting through the outer 
coating, it expands upward until it reaches 
ihe open air, when it puts forth a leaf. At the 
same time the roots increase in length, and 
and finally reach beyond the parent seed 
which supplies the first food, both to the 
stem and roots. 
The first leaf furnishes a new feeder. The 
roots may find nothing outside the seed but 
pure water, and yet, for some time after the 
original seed-food is all exhausted, the plant 
will continue to increase in size and weight. 
Let us see how this is. If we examine the 
leaf with a magnifying glass, we shall find 
its surface filled with little apertures or 
mouths. If we put a thin coating of var¬ 
nish over these openings, the plant will 
cease to grow, and soon sicken and die—of 
starvation. The fact is, this leaf gathers 
food from the air. This is the case with all 
plants. 
* Two typographical errors occurred in the manure article, in 
the first edition of our January number. At the head of the 
tables on page 5, the word pounds should be ounces , and on page 
6, the 23d and 2-lth lines from the bottom of the middle column 
should change places, and read “ theories to account for phe¬ 
nomena, to be set against those received for a long time as 
orthodox.” 
The air is in reality the great storehouse 
of food for all growing vegetables. As we 
shall presently see, the roots gather but 
very little actual food from the soil itself. 
To our vision the air appears devoid of the 
materials that make up the body of a tree, 
the bulk of a crop of grass, or straw and 
grain ; but this is only in appearance. If 
we take a mass of dry wood or straw, and 
grind it to fine powder, and then whirl a 
handful of it into the air, it will speedily be¬ 
come invisible. The separate particles are 
each too small to be seen when apart from 
each other. When a mass of wood, or veg¬ 
etable or animal matter of any kind rots, it 
is -not lost. In the decaying process, the 
minute invisible particles one by one escape 
unobserved into the air, and float about in it, 
unseen, it is true, but none the less there. 
The same thing takes place in burning. 
The wood or coal in the stove gradually dis¬ 
appears. Wlien the burning is rapid, a large 
mass of these particles go up together in the 
form of visible smoke, but the smoke itself 
soon ceases to be visible. Did it ever occur 
to you, reader, to inquire where goes all the 
millions of tuns of fuel, wood, straw, ma¬ 
nure, &c.. that annually disappear from our 
sight l They can not be annihilated, else 
long since our whole earth would have 
dwindled away, for what a vast amount of 
matter disappears every month or year. The 
truth is, nothing, no particle of matter, how¬ 
ever small, goes out of existence. All these 
apparently disappearing masses of coal, 
wood, straw, dead animal bodies, are merely 
undergoing a change of form. From a solid 
visible mass produced by an aggregation of 
infinitely small atoms, the minute particles, 
one by one, escape into the great store¬ 
house, the air. We do not stop to inquire 
after the chemical change undergone by this 
matter. It is sufficient for our purpose to 
state, that the infinitely small particles are 
separated from each other in such a way as 
to be no longer visible to our sight, and that 
the materials of immense forests, myriads 
of acres of grass, grains, &c., which but last 
year covered the surface of the earth, are 
now actually floating unseen in the air above 
and around us. 
To go back then to our little apple tree 
(or blade of grass, or wheat or corn) which 
we left just starting above the ground. The 
millions of little mouths upon the surface of 
each leaf are opened to the surrounding air, 
and constantly appropriate, or suck in the 
invisible particles that have been furnished 
tQ the air by the decay of previously 
growing plants. These minute particles, 
after being taken in by the leaves, are car¬ 
ried down by the sap , and deposited, one here, 
and another there, in the stalk, in the roots, 
and in the leaves themselves, and thus in¬ 
crease their bulk. In this way the new plant 
is made up out of the very materials that 
but recently, perhaps, constituted other 
plants. 
And how beautiful is this process. How 
pleasing to contemplate even the decaying 
mass of rotting vegetables, to follow in the 
mind’s eye the escaping particles as they 
rise up to be carried hither and thither by 
the ever-moving air, until caught again by 
the leaves of a new plant, where they abide 
for a time in a new combination, and then 
again go through the same ceaseless round. 
What mixtures and associations these parti¬ 
cles undergo in the atmosphere. Here floats; 
an atom escaped from the perspiring humai 
skin, side by side with another from a stove 
another from the putrid manure-heap, ano 
.ther lrom the carcass of a decaying animal- 
These, now together, now separated, now 
together again, are perhaps caught by a rose- 
tree leaf, carried into the stem, and by a 
wonderful combination are at last woven 
into the very texture of the variegated 
flower. 
Does any reader need confirmation of the 
fact that plants derive their food chiefly 
from the air! He can prove it to himself. 
Take a box of earth, holding say five hun¬ 
dred pounds, weigh it carefully, and plant a 
single ounce of clover seed in it. Now let 
the seed spring up, and supply it with 
nothing but pure water. The clover-seed 
will grow, and crop after crop may be re¬ 
moved, until a thousand pounds or more o 1 
clover have been taken away. Let the earth 
in the box be then weighed again, and it will 
be found that, instead of losing, it will have 
increased its weight by nearly as much as 
the weight of the clover roots remaining in 
it. Whence came this thousand pounds of 
clover ! Evidently from the air through the 
leaves. It is true that in any part of the air 
there is but a very trifling amount of invisi¬ 
ble plant-food, but it is to be remembered 
that the atmosphere is ever in motion, and 
that the same portion never remains in con¬ 
tact with a plant or leaf but an instant. 
Each successive wave of air furnishes a 
new supply of food. 
What is said of the box of earth may be 
said of the soil generally. Upon a plot, 
of nearly all sand, and containing not a 
pound of vegetable matter, a stately pine 
tree will spring up and grow until it contains 
hundreds of pounds of charcoal alone, be¬ 
sides other organic materials. This could 
not have come from the soil—it must have 
come from the air. So upon a field, in a 
single season twenty tons of grass, or straw 
or corn-stalks, may grow and be removed, 
and yet the soil will contain quite as much 
organic or vegetable matter in itself in 
autumn as in spring. 
We may consider it as understood and ad¬ 
mitted, then, that the mass of vegetables 
comes from the air. Let us now examine 
the plant—the growing apple tree, the wheat, 
or grass, or corn-stalk, to the end that we 
may ascertain how it grows, and how we 
may increase its growth, for this is what we 
are aiming at. 
To feed, it must have leaves for collecting 
food. But this food must be carried from 
the leaves to the different parts of the plant. 
The sap does this. The sap may be con¬ 
sidered as simply water collected from the 
soil by the roots, which goes up through 
tubes on the - inside of the stem (of the 
tree, grass or grain stalk), then through 
one set of tubes to the surface of the leaves, 
where it takes up he food collected from 
