VILLAGE LECTURE.-NO. 2. 
367 
then, indeed they might have to wake up for 
harvest time. But it has been so arranged that 
plants require our labor both at seedtime and 
harvest, and all the season through, in order 
that they may yield their utmost; and thus em¬ 
ployment, as well as food, is provided for 
man. 
Now let us return to the case of one tree. 
We have proved that its substance did not come 
from the soil; for the matter of wood is not in 
the "soil in quantity enough, and the plant can¬ 
not change one thing into another—and as air 
is the only other thing that the plant has access to, 
the inference is, that it must get its substance 
thence. Well, but x you will say, “ If the wood 
is not in the soil it certainly is not in the air. 
Th< re is nothing solid or substantial in air like 
the matter of wood must be.” J think I can 
prove to you that there is something like the 
matter of wood in the air, nevertheless. Sup¬ 
pose that you cut down that tree, which you say 
could not have come out of the air, and set fire 
to it and leave it for a little while—on your re¬ 
turn you find that it has gone—that is, it has burn¬ 
ed up. Where has it gone to? If it never was 
in the air before it is in the air now, for certain; 
and the clear air into which it has been con¬ 
verted will go to furnish the matter of wood to 
other trees which are still growing. The tree 
did not all disappear, however. It left some 
ashes behind it. Well, the ashes of the tree 
are what it got from the soil, and they are thus 
returned to it; and whatever of the tree will 
burn or rot away back into the air, just goes to 
the place from whence it originally came. 
Plants make their growth by food from the 
mineral kingdom, which includes the air; and 
animals by food from the vegetable kingdom; 
but there is constantly this compensating pro¬ 
cess going on, that every plant and every ani¬ 
mal that lives, eventually dies, and each gives 
back to the sources from whence it was obtain¬ 
ed, the matter of which it is made. I suppose 
that all the plants on the surface of the globe 
now, if weighed, would not be heavier nor light¬ 
er than the vegetable covering in which the 
earth was clothed 5,000 years ago; and l dare 
say that the quantity of animal matter now in 
life is not greater nor less than the quantity 
which lived in any other year since the world 
was fully peopled. The plants take food from 
the earth and the air, and grow and feed ani¬ 
mals, and these die and return to the dust, fur¬ 
nishing the earthy part back to the soil from 
whence it came, and the combustible part back 
to the air from whence it came. You can im¬ 
agine a farm which should be a little world by 
itself—large enough to maintain a family—it 
should provide the materials for their cottage 
and food for themselves; and wheat enough 
should grow upon it, and sheep and cattle, and 
flax and grass should flourish there; so that wool¬ 
en cloth and linen and beef and mutton and 
bread might all be made from it; and thus this 
family need never leave this bit of land, and it 
would, as I said, be a little world by itself. 
Now the soil furnishes its portion; that is, 
.heir ashes, to the grass on which the cows feed 
—and to the stems of the flax and to the wool 
of the sheep and to the food of the people; but 
there is no fear of its being ultimately impov¬ 
erished by this—for it gets it all back again 
very soon, for the cattle are killed and the men 
die—and the plants wither and the ashes of all 
are returned to the land whence they came— 
and the fuel is burned, the dunghill rots away 
in the ground, and thus all the part which was 
obtained from the air is returned also to it. 
There is no difficulty now in conceiving of such 
a farm as this yielding so many tons of cheese 
or so many bushels of wheat every year with¬ 
out suffering. We know that this did not all 
come out of the soil, so as for us to be obliged 
to believe that there are hundreds of tons of 
cheese or of wood or of wheat all in the soil 
now to furnish future crops; and we know-that 
it did not all come from the air, so as for us to 
be obliged to believe that there is the matter of 
all the crops that shall be harvested, and all the 
timber that shall be cut to the end of time, now 
existing in the air ready to be used year by 
year as time passes. What we now know is 
this—that every year the soil contributes what 
may be called the mineral part of our crops— 
their ashes, in fact, if they were burned—and 
little else; and the air contributes almost all 
of the woody part of them—what would disap¬ 
pear if they were burned; and each in the 
course of a very few years receives back again 
to itself whatever each had given, ready to be 
used over again to make new crops and new 
produce—new food to feed another race of 
men. 
In the case of the farm that yielded the five 
tons of cheese every year—it does not lose five 
tons of the cheesy part of the soil annually; 
the soil has no cheesy part lo lose—all that it 
loses is just such a quantity of earth as the ash¬ 
es of these five tons of cheese would amount to 
if they were burned. What quantity of ashes 
would be left by five tons of cheese if they 
were burned ? A very few pounds—and that is 
all the farm loses every year. Certainly it is 
not the common sand of the soil that exists in 
the cheese, but it is a part of the earth of the 
soil that is sent off with the cheese, neverthe¬ 
less; a very small portion, however, and one 
which the soil could lose every year for a very 
long time indeed, without being any the worse 
for it. I burned a ten-pound mangold wurtzel 
the other day, and here are all that remained of 
it; these ashes weigh about an ounce, all the 
rest of this root comes from the air, and it 
has all gone back to the air from which it 
came. 
Transporting Seeds.— The Chinese method 
of packing seeds for distant transportation, is 
to put them in small bottles, with the ashes of 
rice chaff. They allege that if this be omitted, 
small maggots are hatched during the voyage 
which destroy the seed. This ash or any other, 
if not too strong, we presume a acts in two ways; 
1st, as an absorber for any mo*isture which may 
be present, and 2nd, as an alkali to destroy the 
latent eggs or larvse of any insects. 
