PRACTICAL PAPERS — VEGETABLE MATTER , ETC . 363 
a new creation, it is that it may be transferred to the agricultural 
department of nature’s workshop, there to be taken to pieces and 
exposed to new physical conditions, and under the manipulation 
of new forces, to be molded into organized, forms. 
In this new department, the soil is the laboratory in which mat¬ 
ter from the mineral kingdom is first prepared, then worked up 
into vegetable forms. To bring about these results, matter is now 
placed under the influence of vital forces, governed by biological 
laws, which like the physical and chemical forces in the mineral 
kingdom, give endless variety of form and feature to their pro¬ 
ducts. But in the vegetable, as well as in the mineral kingdom 
this great variety of form and feature is developed from a very 
few plant forming substances. Among the most important are the 
following: Oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, phosphorus, sul¬ 
phur, chlorine, silicon, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, 
aluminum, thirteen in all. These are the material substances from 
which vegetable forms of matter are made ; or to speak more cor¬ 
rectly, I may say, on which vegetable forms feed, for they starve, 
or fatten, as these substances are withheld or furnished in a prop¬ 
er condition. Indeed, man in this co-operative system of nature 
is a plant feeder, and a knowledge of plant food, and how it can 
be prepared, is the highest attainment in agricultural science, and 
the secret of success in agricultural practice. Some of these sub¬ 
stances nature provides without the assistance of man ; such for in¬ 
stance as carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Plants take all the car¬ 
bon they need from the carbonic acid of the atmosphere, and hy¬ 
drogen and oxygen from the water. But the mineral substances 
are unevenly scattered through the soil, as the rocks from which 
the soil was formed contained them, or otherwise. Hence it is the 
business of man to know, whether these mineral substances neces¬ 
sary for plant food are already in the soil before his seeds are placed 
there ; if they are not, there is no alternative but that he must 
supply them, or his crops will come forth in a stunted, half starved 
condition. 
This plant food is found only in the mineral kingdom, wrapped 
up—as before stated—in mineral compounds, and aggregated into 
rock formations. Here only, these minerals can be studied in 
their separate characters and multitudinous forms, where nature 
