164 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
the market value of his mere physical force depreciates in price. 
Without going into an elaborate argument, your committee appeal 
(o the ten thousand improvements of the age in which we live, as 
furnishing conclusive evidence that there is no power on earth so 
productive of great and beneficent results as the power of highly 
cultivated intellect. 
Those that follow the plow, and swing the axe, and gather the 
harvest, have not, as a class, been instructed in the sciences which 
reveal nature’s process for changing earth, air and water, into 
bread, meat and clothing. Hence, to manufacture a barrel of pork, 
or flour, a firkin of butter, or 100 pounds of wool, from the ingredi¬ 
ents necessary to form those agricultural staples, the farmer loses 
one-third or one-half of his labor by its misapplication. To make 
one ripe wheat plant, nature requires no fewer than fourteen simple 
and distinct elementary bodies. Each one of these substances has 
peculiar properties, and not one can serve as a substitute for another. 
The laws established by the Creator of the universe, which go¬ 
vern all the changes in the form and properties of matter, whether 
in a crude mineral or in an organized condition, making the living 
tissues of plants and animals, are as uniform and unerring as the 
laws that regulate the rising and the setting of the sun. By studying 
the operation of these laws, the practical agriculturist is often able 
to effect a result in a day, which he could not accomplish in a week, 
while working against the purposes of nature. 
It is not far from the truth to say, that 400,000 of the 700,000 chil¬ 
dren now attending our common schools, are destined to become 
practical operatives in the great art of making something into grain, 
grass, roots, milk, butter, cheese, wool, fat, lean meat, bone or some 
of the other numerous products of rural labor. Where that some¬ 
thing can be found, and how the raw materials of all cultivated plants 
should be combined, so as to give the largest return for any given 
amount of capital and manual toil, are problems in practical hus¬ 
bandry, which science alone can solve. 
If the ashes obtained by burning a ripe wheat, rye, oat, corn, bar¬ 
ley or timothy plant, be analyzed, not far from 80 per cent will be 
found to be silica, or common flint sand. This silica is an indispen¬ 
sable ingredient in the above named crops: and yet, not one parti¬ 
cle of this mineral can enter the root of any plant except it be dissol¬ 
ved in water. Now, of all earthy substances, flint sand is the most 
insoluble. Indeed, you may boil it for hours in aquafortis, sulphuric 
or muriatic acid, without dissolving it. How, then, is the practical 
farmer to dissolve this mineral, which, more than all other, forms the 
bone necessary to give strength to the stems of his grain, that they 
may hold up, without falling, the load of ripe seed in the ears? 
Chemically speaking, silica is an acid, and will unite with a large 
dose of the two alkalis, potash and soda, and form a soluble silicate 
of those bases. 
This explanation reveals the reason why the alkalis in wood ashes 
are so valuable as fertilizers on sandy soils. On comparing the ana¬ 
lyses of maple, beech and oak ashes, with those obtained from ce¬ 
real plants, there will be found a striking similarity in their respect¬ 
ive constituents. 
Next to clay, sand and potash, lime, soda, phosphorus, sulphur, 
chlorine and iron, are the most important minerals found in cultiva¬ 
ted plants. To prepare these ingredients for use, the following is a 
cheap and easy process. 
Take ten bushels of newly slaked lime. i. e. ten before it is slaked, 
and mix it thoroughly with twenty bushels of loam or vegetable 
mold. Add to the heap five bushels of common salt and an equal 
amount of plaster of Paris; moisten till the mass is like damp earth. 
The plaster will furuish sulphur, and the common salt will yield 
both soda and chlorine. The latter will leave the sodium and unite 
with the caustic lime, forming a soluble salt, called the chloride of 
calcium. The sodium being first converted into soda, will then com¬ 
bine with the carbonic acid from the air and organized matter in the 
vegetable mold, and form a precious alkaline salt, which will dis¬ 
solve common sand. This compound still lacks phosphorous and 
iron. Ground bones furnish the former and copperas the latter min¬ 
eral If one can get the liquid excretions of domestic animals, or of 
the human species, and saturate the compost heap with this com¬ 
pound of ammonia, phosphoric acid, and of other valuable matters 
derived from plants, the fertilizing properties of this artificial manure 
will be greatly increased 
There is no branch of business in which the sciences of geology, 
chemistry, and of vegetable and animal physiology, are so useful to 
man, as they arc to the practical husbandman. The term science, 
is but another name for knowledge. It is, however, usually limited 
in connection with natural phenomena, to the systematic investiga¬ 
tion of the laws of nature. Of all men, the practical farmer is most 
interested in understanding and obeying these wise and salutary 
laws. 
The fact is susceptible of demonstration, that from a general igno¬ 
rance of these laws, we have wasted in the State of New-York. 
within the last twenty-five years, the indispensable ingredients that 
go to form both bread and milk for our children, which, if placed in 
New-York and Boston markets, would sell for one hundred millions 
of dollars. 
The guano imported into Great Britian last year, sold for $4,000,- 
000. It is retailed in Western New-York by an exchange of four 
pounds of flour for one of guano. 
To make an acre of wheat lhat will yield 20 bushels, the plants 
must have twelve pounds of phosphorus. To purchase that amount 
of a substance, which forms one of the constituents of the human 
brain, at a druggist’s shop, will cost $24. 
The fact is notorious that there are thousands, if not millions, of 
acres in this State which once bore 20 bushels of good wheat per 
acre, that now yield not more than ten bushels. To make our 
twelve millions of bushels of wheat a year, we annually consume 
about 7,000.000 pounds of phosphorus. It is the phosphate of lime 
contained in grass and hay, derived from the earth, out of which all 
our domestic an ; mals form the solid, earthy portion of their bones. 
At present prices the phosphorous and ammonia, annually thrown 
away in the solid and liquid excretions of man and his domestic ani¬ 
mals, are worth some $20,000,000. 
A cargo of guano—phosphorous and concentrated nitrogen deri¬ 
ved from the fish on which* sea-fowls feed—arrived in New-York a 
few days since, which will sell at some $60,000! What consum¬ 
mate folly to throw away the raw materials which form our daily 
bread! 
• In a work just published in this country, M. Boussingault states 
that he has seen fields on the table lands of the Andes, which have 
produced excellent crops of wheat annually , for 200 years. Guano 
is the fertilizer used on these fields. 
Recent experiments in Scotland have demonstrated the practica¬ 
bility of growing 44 bushels of wheat on an acre having only 1£ per 
cent of organized matter in the soil. It must contain, however, to 
a limited extent, each of the 14 simple elementary substances which 
form a wheat plant. 
The organized arrangement of the phosphate of lime and magne¬ 
sia, in an embryo corn plant, and the locality of the salts of iron, 
zeine and starch, are worth knowing. The following diagram illus¬ 
trates the section of a grain of corn: 
a. The cotyledon or embryo 
C \ b. Starch. 
c. e. Oil—zeine—sugar, 
d. Salts of iron. 
In the cotyledon or germ, is deposited the phosphates which form the 
bones of animals, and also most of the glutinous substance which is 
indispensible in the formation of lean meat, tendon, tissue, and the 
jelly found in bones. Hence, when the mouse eats out the chit of a 
kernel of corn, he gets the raw material to make muscle, bone, and 
brain; and by taking into its stomach the iron in the dotted line d. 
this little animal, as well as the ox and man, obtain the - substance 
which give color to the blood, and with oxygen, the vital heat of 
the system. 
The iron in venous blood, is in a state of protoxide. This fluid is 
loaded with carbon, if not carbonic acid. From these causes venous 
blood is much darker colored than arterial blood. In the latter the 
iron is a peroxide, imparting to the blood a light vermillion hue. 
The fact has often been demonstrated, that the air expelled from 
the lungs of a warm blooded animal contains 100 times more carbon¬ 
ic acid than the air taken into these organs. As the arteries leading 
from the heart penetrate every part of the living frame, they convey 
vital gas—oxygen, condensed in the peroxide of iron—to every por¬ 
tion of the system. This oxygen, while the blood is passing through 
the tissues from the arteries into the veins, combines with that por¬ 
tion of carbon which has performed its office in nourishing the body, 
and carries it, in the form of carbonic acid, through the veins, heart 
and lungs, into the ever moving atmosphere. 
In thus burning the waste carbon in the system, oxygen gives out 
just as much heat to the surrounding matter as it would, provided an 
equal quantity of vital gas had burnt an equal amount of fuel in a 
stove. 
Every body knows that active exercise will warm him in cold 
weather—that a horse driven forty miles a day will breathe oftener, 
evolve more heal and consume more food, or fuel, than he will when 
standing quietly in a warm stable. The waste oxygen and hydro¬ 
gen will escape from the lungs of the animal, if quiet, in the form 
of vapor; in perspiration also, if driven hard. This sweat will car¬ 
ry with it some nitrogen and saline matter, which sometimes crys- 
talizes on a horse by the evaporation to dryness of the liquid that 
escapes through his skin. But most of the valuable salts taken from 
the earth in the food of all animals, escapes by the kidneys and bow¬ 
els. 
As the demand for carbon to form fat, muscle, cellular tissue, bone, 
brain, hair and wool, as well as to keep up a continuous heat of 98° 
night and day, is very great, it will be seen why starch is so abun¬ 
dant, not only in corn, as above indicated, but in all plants used as 
food for man or beast. Starch contains a large amount of carbon. 
It is well known that if a bin of corn be moistened, it will heat 
and grow or rot. In the process of sprouting, a seed first imbibes 
some portion of the vital gas that surrounds it, which, uniting with 
the carbon in the starch, forms carbonic acid and evolves heat. 
When starch thus loses one portion of its carbon, it is changed into 
a kind of sugar , making, as is well known, sweet bread from wheat 
a little grown. If a grain of wheat be surrounded by a little waxy 
clay, only a half inch in diameter, it will not sprout, because oxygen 
gas cannot penetrate the compact earth. By sowing grain in wet 
weather, so that the harrow covers the seed with mud, thousands of 
bushels are lost. 
It is a matter of great practical importance to know how to deve¬ 
lop a large, vigorous growth of roots. On a poor soil this can only 
be done by the aid of science. Deep plowing and a thorough pul¬ 
verising of the soil are indispensable to accomplish this object. 
If it cost the farmers of New-York twice as much land and labor 
to produce a bushel of grain as it does their competitors- out of the 
State, how are the cultivators of the earth among us to prosper ? 
All the farmers in the Empire State should rise as one man, and 
insist that the science of keeping property, shall be taught in all their 
common schools. 
The same mental cultivation which will enable an honest tiller of 
the soil lo double the products, and double the value of his better di 
rected industry, will also qualify him to keep and enjoy a much lar 
ger portion of the nett proceeds of his labor. 
Your committee have been constrained to believe that much of 
the opposition to agricultural schools in this Sate, has arisen from 
the well grounded apprehension that if we place the farmers of New- 
York on a par with professional men, in point of attainments, they 
