Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 199 
with new kinds of seeds, planting new varieties and testing them, 
and since 1872 we have been testing the Fultz wheat. That is a 
winter wheat; probably it is a red wheat; but is lightish colored. 
We have sown it three years, and we raised the first year thirty- 
three and one-lialf bushels, and at that time we sowed several other 
varieties and they all killed by the side of it. In 1873 it yielded 
twenty bushels to the acre; last year thirty-five bushels to the acre 
with simple ordinary culture. Last year it was raised on new land, 
no other crops ever having been raised on it. It had protection 
from the north by timber ten rods wide between the wheat and 
the lake. You want to remember that manures furnish quite a 
large portion of food; the larger portion of it is mineral food and 
the smaller part of it is organic food. 
The atmosphere is filled with just what your plants want. We 
are sending up from this town to-day a great many tons, from coal 
that we are burning. Every twelve pounds of coal forms forty-four 
pounds of carbonic acid gas, and the principal material of which 
plants are composed is carbon, and that is organic—it will burn. 
Now plants take this substance—carbonic acid gas—from the at¬ 
mosphere and decompose it, and give the oxygen back again to the 
air, and takes the carbon in that way, and with what mineral matter 
it needs, which it takes from the soil, it builds up its structure in 
that way. So, the oxygen of the soil is the oxygen of the mineral 
matter, and the reason the organic matter assists the growth of the 
plant is, the plant can only take up that material in solution, and 
when the plants have taken up all the soluble mineral material they 
can get, when that fis completed, the soil is barren—that is, when 
you have taken out all those materials. There is plenty of organic 
matter left yet for the soil to get, because that is furnished from 
the atmosphere. But what we must depend upon for the fertility 
of the soil is to keep this mineral matter constantly changing, and 
what we must do is to keep changing it, that which is not soluble 
into soluble form, and bring more and more of that insoluble mat¬ 
ter into soluble matter. Now, of course, this is not all, but largely 
the office that manure performs. Now we apply special manure 
often for bringing into the soil just what the soil wants. We ap¬ 
ply others when the soil wants potash. 
There is nothing in salt that plants want—the plants will not 
