THE CULTIVATOR. 
47 
DR. LEE’S ADDRESS. 
The notice which we had prepared of the proceedings 
of the Erie Co. Agricultural Fair, was mislaid, and we 
only refer to it now for the purpose of giving some ex¬ 
tracts from the excellent address of Dr. Lee before the 
Society. The papers prepared by Dr. L. on agricultural 
topics for the Buffalo Com. Advertiser, had proved him 
to be adequate to the important duty assigned him, and 
the address is of the first order. We are happy to state 
that Dr. Lee is now in the Legislature, a worthy repre¬ 
sentative of the agificultural interests of the farmers of 
Erie and the state. We would remark that in the mat¬ 
ter of oats and barley, Erie will probably remain with¬ 
out an equal in 1843. The crop of oats that took the 
premium, was 100 bushels to the acre, and that of barley 
80 bushels to the acre. Both these crops were grown by 
John Carpenter of the town of Wales. 
Our first extract will relate to the value of ammonia to 
plants, and the best mode of obtaining it; and the second 
to the importance of warmth and quiet to domestic ani¬ 
mals. The whole of the address will well repay peru¬ 
sal, and we are glad to perceive it has been embodied in 
a pamphlet form, with the proceedings of the Society. 
VALUE OF AMMONIA TO PLANTS. 
£< I have stated to you that most plants require, in ad¬ 
dition to water and carbon, a portion of nitrogen. This 
also comes from a gaseous substance in the atmosphere. 
Although nitrogen 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 decomposing com¬ 
mon air, but derive it from ammonia, which is furnished 
to the atmosphere in great abundance by a world of de¬ 
composing vegetables and animals. It is the ammonia 
that escapes from putrifying substances that causes their 
offensive smell. Now, again comes up the practical 
question: How are we to collect this highly volatile gas, 
and transform it at the cheapest rate, into wheat, beans, 
cheese and wool, of which it is an important element? 
Rain water has a strong affinity for ammonia—which is 
a compound of 14 parts of nitrogen and 3 of hydrogen. 
Water at 50° will absorb 650 times its bulk of this vege¬ 
table food. Every rain then, brings considerable quan¬ 
tities of it to the ground. It is the ammonia in rain wa¬ 
ter that imparts to it its peculiar softness in washing the 
hands or clothes. 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 putrify 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 rain after a long drouth, is much the richest in 
this gas. Being extremely volatile, it escapes into the 
air again after a warm,shower, much quicker than wa¬ 
ter evaporates. What then will aid the cultivator of 
plants, and seize this volatile ammonia, as lime does car¬ 
bonic acid, and hold it permanently about their roots, in 
such a shape that it will feed them all they need, and no 
more? For an excess of this stimulating alkali, like an 
excess of salt in our food, will destroy life instead of 
supporting it. 
Common charcoal is the cheapest, and therefore 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 slowly 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 extremely valu- 
ble manure. The liberal application of this well known 
substance to the wheat fields in France, has mainly, in 
connection 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 charcoal should be sown 
in May, at the rate of 75 bushels per acre, well pulver¬ 
ised. This subject 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, every year, bating of course 
extreme casualties. 
<l You all know that a single kernel of wheat, will 
sometimes, when its fecundity is highly stimulated, send 
up 20 stalks, and that each stalk will bear a head con¬ 
taining 100 kernels. Here is a yield of 2,000 fold. Na¬ 
ture then has rendered it practicable to harvest 2,000 
bushels of good wheat from one bushel of seed. The 
most skeptical among you will not deny that 2,000 ker¬ 
nels have been produced from one kernel, and that the 
same natural causes that produce such a result in one in¬ 
stance, will ever operate, at all times, under like circum¬ 
stances, in the same manner. Hence it is but reasonable 
to say that nature is quite as willing to produce 50 bush¬ 
els of good wheat on an acre of ground every year, mark 
me, if her laics he obeyed, as she is to grow fifty bushels 
of weeds every year on the same ground.” 
IMPORTANCE OF WARMTH AND QUIET TO DO 
MESTIC ANIMALS. 
ce Permit then, a practical agriculturist, who has de 
voted the best energies of his mind for years, to the stu¬ 
dy of agricultural chemistry, vegetable and animal phy¬ 
siology, to say to those of you who are wool growers, 
that by keeping the animal warm in winter, cool in sum¬ 
mer, and quiet throughout the year—by stimulating with 
the elements of wool the organs 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 sys¬ 
tem every moment, night and day, a needless quantity of 
animal food, which under more favorable and other cir¬ 
cumstances, might have been converted into wool, tal¬ 
low and muscle. Mark me. There is a positive loss, a 
needless throwing away of 20 to 50 per cent of the food 
in wintering all domestic 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 system, that are lost; but by inhaling a cold 
and dense atmosphere, and bringing a larger amount of 
oxygen gas into the lungs, and through them into the 
blood, than is needed, inflammations are generated, end¬ 
ing in consumptions, alike in man and beast. An ani¬ 
mal is an electrical battery or machine. It is practica¬ 
ble so to excite the organs that form fat in a pig, in a 
positive degree; and so to quiet all the other organs of 
the animal by a kind of negative electricity, that the ani¬ 
mal shall transform nearly all of its food that can be con¬ 
verted into fat, into that well known substance. The 
same remarks will hold true, in a good degree, when ap¬ 
plied to the secretion of milk in cows, and the seeretion 
of wool in the capilliary organs of the sheep. 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 elephant!” 
FRAUD IN LAND SALES. 
A friend in Marysville, Tenn., informs us that exten¬ 
sive frauds are being perpetrated in that vicinity in the 
sale of lands. As our informant has not permitted us to 
use his name in connexion with his statements, we must 
of course withhold the names of the persons implicated, 
and can only give the information furnished us in gene¬ 
ral terms. It is stated “ that some two or three years 
since, a grant was obtained through fraud, of Gov. James 
K. Polk, of a vast tract of land, purporting to be located 
in the county of Blount.” It is further stated that those 
who have bought land under this fraudulent grant, have 
ascertained on removing to it, that it had been granted 
to others, who have occupied it for at least 20 years. 
Some people from New-Jersey, who had purchased land 
in this situation, it is said, after spending all their means 
in getting to it, have found too late that they have been 
imposed upon, and are now struggling by hard labor, to 
get money to take them back to their native state. 
