Vol. LIV. No. 2364. 
NEW YORK. MAY 18, 1895. 
$1.00 PER YEAR. 
HOW NATURE IMPROVES THE SOIL. 
NATURAE METHODS OF SUPPLYING FERTILITY. 
The Growth of a Forest. 
As the cost of procuring' and applying fertilizing 
substances is one of our most serious burdens, why do 
we so generally fail to avail ourselves of Nature’s 
simple method of maintaining fertility, everywhere 
in operation openly and visibly to the commonest ap¬ 
prehension ? In all our fields below the stratum of 
10 or 12 inches in which we cultivate and grow our 
crops, there are inexhaustible stores of the very plant 
food that we need, which, by Nature’s laws and forces, 
are pressing to enter this stratum from which we ex¬ 
clude them, and which we sterilize by cropping under 
cultivation. Nothing is needed except that the capil¬ 
lary attraction of moisture which brings this stored 
fertility to this thus sterilized region, should take the 
place, almost inexpensively, of the various forms of 
manure in the cost of obtaining and applying which 
we now almost wholly deprive ourselves of profit from 
our processes of production. For familiar and ready 
illustration of this work of Nature, consider the crop 
she grows in our forests. Where else 
do you find lime, magnesia, potash, 
phosphoric acid, nitrogen and other 
elements of fertility, taken from the 
soil and air and stored in the produced 
vegetable life, to compare at all in 
quantity with the same elements that 
are found in the structure of these trees, 
whose branches throw themselves up¬ 
ward in riotous strength to spread their 
leaves, blossoms and fruits in the 
favoring sunshine, while their immense 
trunks almost touch each other. Con¬ 
sider carefully this excessive, unfavor¬ 
ing, overcrowding of root, of trunk, 
of branch; yet this unequaled luxuri¬ 
ance and wealth of production. Con¬ 
sider again that no one plows and cul¬ 
tivates to make this crop, and no one 
supplies fertilizer of any kind what¬ 
ever. Finally, after a long period of 
years of the steady pull of all this 
vegetation exhausting upon all sources 
of supply of plant food, when ax and 
stump puller have cleared the ground, 
instead of finding, as one might ex¬ 
pect to do, soil bankrupt of fertility, 
one finds a virgin soil, in which are 
present in excess the very elements 
which the trees, with all their incon¬ 
ceivably effective forces of abstraction, have been 
constantly withdrawing. 
What an Object-Lesson for the Orchardist. 
His trees are from 20 to 40 feet apart. He plows 
and plows, and manures from barnyard and bag, and 
prunes with knife and saw, and devotes himself most 
faithfully to promote the thrift of his trees ; yet 
Nature outstrips him in her wild untended wealth of 
production, without loss, and even with large increase 
of resources for further development. The difference 
lies in this: Nature establishes the capillary attrac¬ 
tion of moisture, by which the mineral elements are 
brought from below to the region occupied by the 
roots, and by the same process she forms nitrates, as 
saltpeter or nitrate of potash, and as nitrate of lime, 
and here places a complete fertilizer, constantly sup¬ 
plied, compounded and made available by moisture. 
She goes a step further, and by the same process she 
develops and places the innumerable roots and root¬ 
lets of her vegetation, in the very midst of the bed 
of food she has prepared for them. The whole 
process is as intelligent in design and unerring in 
adaptation, as is the filling of a cow’s udder with 
milk, the coincident birth of her calf, and the coming 
together of the teat and the mouth, the milk and the 
stomach. All are provided and grouped for the one 
purpose of production and growth. This process of 
Nature all takes place under the indispensable condi¬ 
tion of a cover, or mulch, furnished by fallen leaves 
and twigs, and by the miscellaneous undergrowth and 
humble forms of vegetation, that yearly grow, perish 
and decay in the soil above the roots of the trees. 
No one with our present knowledge of agricultural 
chemistry ought to doubt that fertilization sufficient 
for all our requirements, can be provided and main¬ 
tained for orchards, at least, by putting down the 
ground once for all to the profound rest of Nature, 
under a sufficient mulch, never to be removed, but to 
be made ever continuous by renewal whenever by 
decay or other cause, renewal may become needful. 
Through this mulch there will come no weeds; under 
it there will always be darkness, moisture, natural 
regulation of temperature, and all the conditions in 
which plant food and roots form and gather together 
and do their best work. 
Does this sort of work go on under cover ? Ref¬ 
erence to forest growth and conditions ought to be 
a sufficient assurance that it does. The amount of 
fertility accumulated by the trees from all sources, 
and returned to the soil in leaves, etc., is scarcely 
worth mentioning in comparison with what is taken 
from the ground and retained; so that the fallen 
leaves are wholly inadequate by their mere decay to 
keep up fertility from year to year, much less to in¬ 
crease it beyond the annual requirements of growth. 
Besides, it is all on the surface, not plowed under and 
mixed with the soil as our cultivation demands. 
Liebig says: “The fallen leaves contain such 
trifling quantities of potash and phosphoric acid, in 
comparison to their mass, that it is difficult to account 
for the injurious consequences arising from the raking 
up and removal of the fallen leaves in woods.” I will 
add that these injurious consequences arise almost 
wholly from the removal of the leaves as a cover, or 
mulch, by which this beautiful, harmonious work of 
Nature is seriously interfered with. 
Cuthbert W. Johnson says : “ An English farmer 
inadvertently left for some months a door in his fallow 
field; for several years after that the crops were 
particularly luxuriant where the door had been lying; 
so much so that one would have said that some rich 
manure had been applied to that spot.” 
The Scotch writer, Anderson, in his “ Economy of 
Manures,” says : “ Every practical farmer knows, or 
ought to know, for the facts are constantly before his 
observation, that land can be made exceedingly fertile 
without manure. He must have noticed that if any por¬ 
tion of the soil has been covered, either accidentally or 
designedly, for some time by water, stone, planks, 
logs, chips, brush, rails, corn stalks, straw, buildings 
of every description, with hay or straw ricks, leaves 
or clover, and in fact that under any and every sub¬ 
stance, which has covered its surface closely, it (the 
surface soil,) invariably becomes exceedingly fertile, 
and that the degree of this fertility is totally inde¬ 
pendent of the covering substance.” I am sure our 
own common experience is all in this direction, and it 
sufficiently accounts for the maintenance of fertility 
about the roots of forest trees. 
Under the moisture and other conditions furnished 
by the covering of fallen leaves, and by the additional 
exclusion of intense sunlight and heat, by the un¬ 
fallen leaves of the growing season, plant food has 
come up from below the range of feed¬ 
ing roots, and more than supplied 
their demands. How different the 
conditions that we furnish to our 
orchards. All our experiment stations, 
our past and present literature, our 
lecturers at horticultural and agricul¬ 
tural societies, and our practical work¬ 
ers in fruit growing, insist on more 
and better fertilizing And cultivation ; 
and every year witnesses a further and 
more expensive departure from the 
surprising simplicity, cheapness and 
efficiency of treatment, provided for 
us by a wisdom infinitely superior to 
our own. Yet there certainly is very 
much of value in fertilization and cul¬ 
tivation as thus advocated, regarded 
as a change from a neglected, weedy 
surface, exposed continually to ex¬ 
tremes of heat and cold, wet and 
always wind-swept, storm-beaten and 
compacted. 
These two are really the only con¬ 
ditions of which we know much prac¬ 
tically, and bad as it is, cultivation is 
much the better of the two. Unfor¬ 
tunately, no one comes forward with 
the practical experience of a term of 
several years to tell us of the results of 
a continuous soil cover, as here proposed; for mulch¬ 
ing, though not new, has been restricted to newly- 
planted trees, and other temporary purposes, except 
in Nature’s way in the woods. 
Is a Soil Cover Practical ? 
In discussions of its utility, as I have met them, it 
is disposed of as not practical on the score, princi¬ 
pally, of expense and magnitude of the undertaking. 
These are assumptions unsustained by facts, and born 
of non-recognition of the fact, of inestimable value, 
that to all that has hitherto been claimed for a mulch, 
there must be added what has nowhere been publicly 
and distinctly insisted upon, as I do now here insist, 
that soil covering is the surest and cheapest method 
of restoring and maintaining fertility, and should be 
applied, not only continuously to fruit trees, bushes 
and vines, but also to all other crops while growing, 
whose habits will permit of it, and to all our fields at 
all times while lying dormant, for its fertilizing and 
mechanical effects so long obscurely known or sus¬ 
pected. I mean that mulching when used, has been 
merely for protection of roots from drought and 
sudden changes, and not with any recognition of its 
WHARF AT NIAGARA, ONT., IN THE REACH SEASON. Fig. 10tf. 
See page 343. 
