Root; Spiraea lobata, Queen-of-tbe-Prairie; Ver¬ 
bena Aubletia. 
Blue. — Campanula rotundifolia, Harebell ; 
Delphinium exaltatum, Tall Larkspur; Erigeron 
speoiosum; » 
Iris Virginica, 
Large Blue Flag; Linnm perenne, 
Pentstemon glaber 
ostemon violaceus, Prairie clover; 
replans, Jacob’s 
Sea-Lavender 
Spiderwort; 
Spiderwort. 
Yellow and Orange.— Aquilegia chrysantha, 
Rky. Mt. yellow Columbine; Asclepias tuberosa, 
Butterfly Weed; Cassia Marilandica, Wild Sen¬ 
na ; Coreopsis lanceolata; Cyprepedium parvi* 
florum; C. pubescens ; Gaillardia sristata; 
Habenaria ciliaris, Yellow Fringed Orchis; 
judge, exhaustion of the soils in your State is 
not taking place to any alarming extent. There 
are various processes by which a greater pro¬ 
duce oan be obtained from a soil, but the selec¬ 
tion of these must in all cases depend on a 
variety of local circumstances, such as the price 
of labor, the value of the product sold, the cost 
of the various processes to be employed, eto. A 
person therefore writing from a distance would 
hn a.1mnnt certain to commit serious errorB if he 
assign to each acre the constituents removed, I 
therefore give them altogether. There are 53 
acres of pasture in every 100 in the State of New 
York; and if thiB area kept the stock, we should 
arrive at the amount of constituents removed 
per acre, by dividing the figures I give by 53 ; 
or, if the hay is consumed by the stock, by 
dividing these figures by 80. 
Table 4. 
Showing the amount of Nitrogen, Phosphoric 
Acid and Potash, in pounds, per acre,removed 
every year from the land, first, assuming that 
the grain, potatoes, meat and mine are sold ofj 
the farm, the straw and hav being consumed 
and returned to the land in manure; and sec¬ 
ondly that the hay also is sold off the farm. 
ing table will be seen the number of acres per 
cent, of each crop grown in the State of New 
York and in the 21 English grazing counties; 
also the average produce of each crop. 
Table 3. 
Showing the number of acres in each crop in 100 
• in the State of New York and in the 21 grazing 
countits in England; also the produce per 
aore of each crop. 
Gentiana crinita, Fringed Gentian ; 
, f Slender Blue Flag ; Iris versicolor, 
-gf--, perennial 
Flax ; Lupinus polyphyllus, Mauy-leavedLupine; 
Pentstemon ovatus; Petal- 
Polemouium 
i Ladder; Statice Limonium, 
, Tradescautia pilosa, Western 
Tradescautia Virginica, common 
Maize. 
Wheat. 
Bye. 
Oats. 
Barley. 
Buckwheat. 
WILD PLANTS AS GARDEN FLOWERS 
Total.... 
Average 
WILLIAM FALCONER, 
Removed per annum. Id 19 
_ acres of grain^.. 
The New York fisrures are calculated from an average 
of ten years, 1866-75; tbe average produce of the En¬ 
glish counties is estimated from the best data I have 
at my command. 
I made, some years ago, a very careful investi¬ 
gation of the amount of bread consumed by our 
population in order to arrive at tbe produce of 
our wheat prop; from this it would appear that 
our average produce per acre amounts to 28 
bushels 
Do.in 19 acres grain, 1.74 acresl 
potatoes. 
Removed per acre of hay 
In the following lists I have classified our 
Wild Plants, as regards time of blooming and 
shades of color, from practical observation, and 
as nearly as is consistent with the space at my 
command. They are also compiled, just as this 
article is written, with a view to suit our North¬ 
ern oliuate, where they are emphatically hardy 
plants. Indeed, with a very few exceptions, we 
cultivate them all at the Botanic Garden here. 
True, we protect most of our plants with a few 
leaves or some rubbish in winter, no matter be 
they ever so hardy, because we find them bene¬ 
fited thereby. 
SPRING. 
White. —Anemone nemorosa, Wood Anemone; 
Garex Fraseriana, Fraser's Sedge ; Cerastium 
arvense. Mouse-ear Chickwoed; Convallaria ma- 
jalis, Li ly-of-tbe-Valley ; Erigeron flagellare, 
Creeping Fleabane ; Hepatica acutiloba, 8harp- 
lobed Liver-leaf; Jeffersonia dipbylla, Twin- 
As above, witli liaysulrt 
but as the western half of the country 
is less adapted for the growth of wheat than the 
eastern half, I have considered the produce to 
be 2G bushels, or 2 bushels less. Similar esti¬ 
mates have been made for the other crops. Ac¬ 
cording to the above table the State of New 
York grows 19 acres of corn in every 100 of im¬ 
proved land, averaging 25 bushels per acre, or 
479 bushels altogether; six different sorts of 
crops being grown. The grazing counties of 
England grow 21)£ acres of grain in every 100, 
averaging 31 bushels per aero, 653 bushels alto¬ 
gether; three different sorts of grain being 
gi own. 
In making any attempt to estimate the relative 
exhaustion of the soil in the two countries, it 
would be necessary to obtain a variety of infor¬ 
mation which 1 do not possess. The potatoes 
in England, for instance, are as a rule grown in 
the neighborhood of large townB or on tho lines 
of railways where town-dung can be obtained, 
and I am disposed to think that all the Boil in¬ 
gredients taken up by the crop are replaced by 
the purchased manure which grows it. Artificial 
manures aud purchased cattle foods are also 
largely employed in England, but it is impossible 
to say how much of the produce of the English 
soils is due to their use. The statistics of New 
York give no information respecting the amount 
of produce sold off, or consumed on the farms. 
Hay for instance exhausts the soil largely of 
mineral matter, especially potash, hut no infor¬ 
mation is to be found with regard to the amount 
consumed or sold. 
In attempting to construct a table, to show 
the amount of the more valuable ingredients of 
plant-food which are removed from the soil in the 
State of New York, I do so more to indicate how 
such questions will be treated by a future race of 
farmers, than for any other purpose. The data 
for the construction of such a table are not in 
existence, and consequently but little reliance 
oan be placed in my figures. In the following 
table is given the amount per acre per annum of 
the three most important ingredients of plant- 
food ; nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash re¬ 
moved from the land in the State of New York, 
assuming that the crops grown are in accordance 
with the table of produce previously given. 
Being ignorant with regard to the amount of 
produce actually sold off the farm without 
restoration, I have constructed the table in 
various forms to show what would be the 
removal of these three substances, supposing 
that some crops were sold and others consumed. 
In order to ascertain tbe amount of manure in¬ 
gredients removed in the animal produots, I 
have taken from the census of 1870 the value of 
the animals killed in the State of New York, 
which I find to be s?183 per 100 acres. Calcu¬ 
lated at 4 cents per pound live-weight, this 
would give me the number of pounds sold. I 
have also from the same census-tables estimated 
the quantity of miik, butter and oheese pro¬ 
duced ; aB however all these can be represented 
by milk, I think it better to found my calcula¬ 
tions on milk alone. It is stated in the “ New 
York Transactions” that the average produoeof 
milk per cow per annum is 1,300 quarts; and as 
out of the 14 head of cattle kept on every 100 
acres, 8 are cows, the quantity of milk is 14,400 
quarts. 
It will be seen by this table that the average 
amount of nitrogen removed iu grain is 21 
pounds per acre, of phosphoric acid, 6% pounds 
and of potash, 5 ponnds. In potatoes the 
amount of the two former substances is the 
same; but of potash, 8 pounds instead of 5 are 
removed by them. Hay removes a muoh larger 
amount of nitrogen than corn, and more than 
three times as much potash. Owing to my 
ignorance with regard to the number of acres 
required to keep live stock, I am unable to 
In either case, it will be seen how exceedingly 
small is the amount, of plant-food removed by 
animals and in their products. The last line 
hut one gives the amount of nitrogen, phos¬ 
phoric acid and potash removed per aore per 
annum over the 100, assuming that all the corn, 
potatoes, live-stock and milk are sold off the 
farm, and the straw and hay consumed, or re¬ 
turned. The last line gives the same, with tbe 
hay sold instead of being consumed. The 
difference in the removal of these substances 
when the hay is sold, is very striking, showing 
plainly how much this crop exhausts the soil. 
It will, I fear, bo some considerable time before 
figures like these become of any real value to 
practical farmers ; tho removal of a fow more or 
less pounds of one substance or another over an 
acre of land being only bare facts which do not 
tell him what, be wants to know; such as, 
whether his soil is becoming exhausted of these 
substances too rapidly ; or whether one ingre¬ 
dient is being removed faster than others, 
I relatively to the amount whi eh Ins soil contains. 
Neither does it tell him whether it would pay to 
restore these constituents in some artificial 
form, nor which of them he should restore to 
the soil. 
As portions of my farm are the only pieces of 
laud iu the world where the constituents of the 
crop removed have beeu estimated for a long 
period of years, it may be useful to give the 
figures obtained in one of tbe fields here for 
comparison with the New York figures. In 1840 
a field of 14 acres which had been under ordinary 
arable cultivation for a century or more, waB 
with barley unmanured, followed by un¬ 
will flourish iu Balt-inipreguateu sous, ana wmeu 
was kindly oompiled for roe by B. M. Watson, 
Jr. of the Plymouth Nurseries, and Professor of 
Horticulture at the Bussy Institution, Harvard 
University. 
The following are true water plants : 
Lathyrusmaritimus; Prunus maritima, white, 
May, will grow inland; *Epilobiuni palustre, 
pink, July, poor; Solidago sempervirens, yellow, 
July, very flue ; ^Statice Limonium. 
The following plants will grow on the beach, 
marBh, and adjoining lands, also on the upland, 
i. e., away from the sea : 
Viola pedata ; Hudsonia tomentosa, yellow, 
May ; H. ericoides, yellow, May ; t Drosera 
rotundifolia, in salt marsh ; Spergularia salina, 
white, Juiy ; Rhus typbina ; R- glabra ; Vitie in 
variety ; Celastrus scandens ; Prunus serotina, 
Spirtca tomentosa, June ; Rosa lucida ; Arnelan- 
ohier Can&denBis ; IlysBa multiflora; Liatris 
Bcariosft, purple.August, September; tVaccimum 
inacrocarpon ; Cletbra alnifolia ; Azalea vis- 
oosa; Kalmia angustifolia; Ilex vertieillata : 
Calyategia sepium ; T° enlilUia orimta ; Ascle- 
pias tuberoBa ; Corema Conrodii, dark chocolate, 
April; Myrica oenfora ; Carya ; Gupressus thy- 
oides ; Jimiperus Virginians ; J. Sabina var. 
procumbena; fPogonia opbioglossoides; fins 
versicolor and Liliuro PhiladelpLicuui. None of 
the above plants would be injured by salt in tbe 
sown 
manured cropR of peas, wheat and oats. In 
1844 and since, wheat has been grown for 34 
years. Portions of tho field have grown corn 
without the return of any manure what¬ 
ever ; no attempt has been made to increase the 
yield by deep plowing or subsoiling, and proba¬ 
bly tho land haB not beeu stirred to the depth of 
more than 3 or 4 inches from the Burface. 
Careful analysis have been made of the products 
obtained; and recently the ash of tbe mixed 
straw aud grain of the last 10 years, and of the 
previous 10 years produoe, have been carefully 
ji nalyaod. 
In the following table I have given the 
amount of nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash 
removed per aore per annum iu tho State of 
New York aud over the unmanured acre of 
Rotbamsted land, taking the average of the last 
20 years. 
New Yoke. 
Corn, hay, meat and milk sold 
straw retained. 
ROTHAMSTED. 
Unmanured land . 
It will be seen by this table that the removal 
of the three constituents of plant-food from the 
Rothamsted soil is very much larger than from 
the Boil in the State of Now YoTk ; and it would 
be larger at Rothamsted even if I had calculated 
the New York soil as selling off the whole pro¬ 
duce, grain aud straw, hay, meat aud milk, and 
restoring nothing. 1 am disposed therefore to 
think that destruction of weeds and more care¬ 
ful cultivation would be quite as efficaciouB in 
increasing the produce of the State of New York 
cropB as the employment of artificial manures. 
As far as practicable tho land at Rothamsted 
is kept free from weeds ; the wheat can there¬ 
fore take up all the available plant-food iu it. 
With how many natives of the soil has the 
wheat grown in the State of New York to con¬ 
tend for its share of food? As far as I oan 
JjUUn«OU J.IO , iUWUOiUW *'*•'*.'-* -Cl- 
fistulosa, Wild Bergamot; Phlox Carolina; P. gla- 
berrima; P. pilosa ; Pentstomou harbatus, var. 
Torreyii; P. Cobaia; P. grandiflorus ; P. pubes- 
cens;*Rhexia Virginica, Meadow-beauty; Rosa 
blancfe, Early Wild Rose; R. Carolina, Swamp 
Rose; R. lucida, Dwarf Wild Robo; Bilene Vir- 
ginica, Fire Pink; Spigelia Marilandica, Pink 
