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tlty of dry powdered clay, that strong pungent smell, wliicli almost took 
your breath, and made your eyes smart, will disappear. Where has it 
gone? It is still produced as before, and yet its presence is not perceived. 
The dry clay absorbs it; and the escaping gasses are fixed in that earth, 
adding to its enrichment. Gypsum or plaster has precisely the same 
effect, but in a more marked degree. A clayey soil—or one containing 
clay—will more beneficially and completely use the manure laid on it. 
When manure is put on land and plowed in, the ammoniacal and carbonic 
acid gasses produced by its decomposition are partially taken up into the 
plants; but being formed faster than the plants can absorb, these pro¬ 
ducts float away to waste or feed some overgrown marsh or forest, except 
the soil can attract and sustain them, and thus hold them over until they 
are required. This clay will do ; this sand alone will not do—this lime 
cannot do—and hence it follows that lands containing clay, constitute the 
most lasting and prolific, and are the most economical for manuring. 
WHEAT CULTURE. 
BY E. A. CALKINS, MADISON. 
The production of wheat is a labor of civilization. It is a labor to the 
profitable performance of which the disciplined care and industry of civil¬ 
ized men are necessary. It requires a careful preparation of the seed and 
soil, the culture which experience has proven as adapted to it, and the 
harvest is then generous as the tillage is skilful. In a rude state of society 
men depend for subsistence on the spontaneous fruit of nature, or the 
spoils of the chase. They do not devote artificial means, except those 
most nearly allied to the natural processes of vegetation, to the production 
of the means of life. They do not clear the land. They plant their seed 
in the ground as chance or convenience dictates, and as it can be done 
with least violence to the proverbial indolence of savage existence. They 
leave it to grow without further culture, and reap the scanty yield when 
it shall have matured beneath the adventitious influences of the sunshine 
and rain. With this slight and careless attention, the coarser grains are 
