THE CULTIVATOR. 
307 
VEGETABLE NUTRITION. 
The writer scarcely expects to be able to offer any 
new views to those who have studied the subject tho¬ 
roughly. His object is to endeavor to explain the sub¬ 
ject to the understanding of practical men,—the farmers 
and gardeners, those who work the soil and derive their 
sustenance from it. Generally speaking, all tillers of the 
soil know that if they apply a load of horse stable ma¬ 
nure to a certain quantity of land, the product will be in¬ 
creased by it to a certain extent; but they do not know the 
minute principles on which it acts. We all know that when 
we eat our dinners, our hunger is satisfied, but how ma¬ 
ny of us know the true cause of that hunger and the mode 
or true cause of its satisfaction? It is precisely the same 
with plants as with animals, including men. If’we do 
not get enough to eat, we languish, and ultimately per¬ 
ish ; if plants do not get enough to eat, they also languish 
and perish, or yield a stinted product. Plants and ani¬ 
mals are enabled to grow by what they eat, and although 
their mode of eating, is different they both act upon the 
same principle, and both growby what they feed on, and 
in no other way. This is vegetable and animal nutrition. 
The increase of a plant in size, is supplied by its nutri¬ 
tion, so is that of an animal—if neither have any thing to 
eat—if a plant have no manure, an animal no food, nei¬ 
ther can grow, both must perish. These are plain matter 
ef fact principles that all understand. Now a new soil— 
that is, a soil just cleared of the timber, possesses a quan¬ 
tity of nutrition, from leaves and other substances that 
have decayed on its surface in the course of time, and 
hence new land is proverbial for good crops; but it is 
soon exhausted, and then a supply becomes necessary 
from some other source—just as your corn crib or meat 
house requires replenishing when exhausted of its con¬ 
tents, that your table may be supplied. This is the plain 
common sense reason why manure is necessary to a soil 
—if your meat house and corn crib require a new supply 
of meat and corn when their old supply is nearly-or quite 
exhausted, so does your soil require manure when that 
approaches exhaustion. 
But how does manure act in a soil, is a question most 
frequently asked, and the answer is, it acts precisely as 
does the meat in the meat house, and corn in the crib. 
Plants eat as well as men. If you have no provender for 
your cattle, you do not expect them to thx*ive; if you 
have but a scanty supply of poor straw, you do not ex¬ 
pect your cows and oxen and horses and sheep to get fat 
on that alone; so, if you have no manure of any kind to 
apply to your land, you do not expect large crops of 
wheat, or corn or rye. These you will say are all com¬ 
mon place remarks—every body knows all this very 
well. The object of bringing all this common place mat¬ 
ter before you, is merely to lay the foundation, as it were, 
of the building. You all admit that food is as necessary 
to plants as to animals. The next question is, how do 
they take it, and how appropriate it to the supply of their 
necessities? We do not see them take it by the mouthful 
and masticate it, and swallow it; but it does not follow 
that they do not do this because we do not see them do it. 
There are at the ends of the roots of all plants, small, ex¬ 
tremely small mouths through which they take food. 
Those little, extremely fine hairy roots, have small open¬ 
ings by which they take from the soil such matter as is 
nutricious. This matter is dissolved by water in the soil, 
and thus rendered fit to be taken up by the roots of the 
plants. That is, the nutritious principles that may be in 
the soil are dissolved by and combined in water. They 
in this medium enter into the sap vessels of the plants; 
just as do the nutricious principles taken into the sto¬ 
mach of animals, enter into the blood. In this way they 
are carried up the plant to the leaves, where they are ex¬ 
posed to the action of the atmospheric air; as is the blood 
carried to the lungs in animals for the action of the air. 
When the sap or circulation of the plant has had sufficient 
exposure to the action of the air, through the medium 
of the leaves, it commences its return downwards to¬ 
wards the roots, supplying in its way such parts of the 
plant as need renovation or addition of woody fibre, &c. 
and when such quantity as is needed has been thus taken 
by the various parts of the plant, the balance, if there be 
any, and that which has been rejected as innutritious, is 
voided in the form of excrement, by the roots, just as is 
done by animals. 
We now come to consider the form or nature of the 
nutritious principles taken from the earth. All the dif¬ 
ferent constituents of nutrition are in the soil and mixed 
together mechanically or chemically. They are dissol¬ 
ved and held in solution by water. The roots of plants 
absorb this solution in such quantity as may be required 
by the plant, and it passes into the plant through the 
channels formed for the purpose called sap vessels, ana¬ 
logous to veins in animals, and immediately ascends to 
the leaves, where it receives the necessary action of the 
atmosphere—some say it receives the necessary supply 
of carbonic acid gas; I suppose it receives in addition to 
carbonic acid gas, nitrogen; that is, that it is nitrogeni- 
zed as well as carbonized, just as is the blood of animals 
oxygenized. It then returns towards the roots, through 
another set of vessels, analogous to arteries in animals, 
and as before remarked, supplies each part of the plant 
with the necessary material to restore its waste or aid in 
its growth. In this process, the plant does not take up 
crude matter, charcoal or lime, or potash, but the ele¬ 
ments or gases that are found in the sap, and that consti¬ 
tute these and other portions of the plant. This whole 
process is precisely the same as that through which the 
nutrition of men and animals is carried. Now if we ap¬ 
ply common salt to a piece of ground, we must not un¬ 
derstand that the plants growing on it will take up salt in 
substance. If they take any thing at all, it will be the 
elements that constitute salt, or those formed by the com¬ 
bination of those elements with such suitable materials as 
may be found in the soil. And so with other articles. 
Suppose we apply potash to the soil, in the form of 
ashes or otherwise, if there be silicic acid in the soil, then 
silicate of potash will be found mingled in the sap of the 
plant, from which the plant will obtain that glossy coat¬ 
ing which we see on the outside of straw, cane, &c. If 
-there'be'-no silicic acid in the soil, and there be potash 
there already, then it is obvious.that silicic acid^no-t-pot- 
ash, is to be added. So with all other constituents of 
plants. It is perfectly impossible for a plant to take from 
the soil any organized substances, woody fibre, potash, 
&c., but it must take the elements of such in solution, and 
form and appropriate them by means of its own organs, 
just as animals do. Hogs do not take their pork and bris¬ 
tles from the corn they feed on, but they make them from 
the elementary principles they obtain from the corn and 
atmosphere. We hear people talk of sour soils; there 
can be no such thing as a sour soil, as such, or per se. 
Some vegetables grow on any and all soils; and if noth¬ 
ing else grows there, it does not follow that the soil is 
sour, but simply that there are none or not enough of the 
elements of other plants to supply their growth. For 
example, starch is composed of carbon, oxygen, and hy¬ 
drogen ; and sugar is composed of the same elements, on¬ 
ly in slightly different proportions. Now oxalic acid, 
(the acid of sorrel,) is composed of carbon and oxygen, 
and these elements must necessarily exist in all soils; add 
hydrogen, which will certainly be supplied by rain wa¬ 
ter in abundance in all soils, and you will have the ele¬ 
ments of starch and sugar, as well as those of oxalic acid. 
But you may add potash to what is called a sour soil, or 
lime, or soda, and still sorrel will grow there; because 
each plant takes from the soil and from the atmosphere, 
that which it requires to constitute its substances, and 
nothing else. You may make the most perfectly rich 
soil that ever lay out of doors, and plant sorrel or the ox- 
alis, in it, and you will find that they will thrive equal¬ 
ly with all other plants; just as all varieties of animals, 
thrive; horses, hogs, sheep and birds, on the same farm, 
each one taking that sort of food that suits it. The great 
mistake, and that which has caused much loss to farmers, 
is the supposition that plants convert compound or com¬ 
bined substances as such, into nutrition. The fact is, 
that all substances that afford food for plants are reduced 
to their original elements in gaseous or watery form, or 
in both, mixed. Water affords in itself a valuable source 
of nutrition to plants. It contains hydrogen, and there 
are few portions of the plant that do not want hydrogen; 
it contains oxygen, and there is not a single part or po* 
