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the combined action of both soil and manure. 
Mr. Campbell, for example, says, “From the 
experiments which I have already tried, I am 
quite satisfied that, even without the application 
of common manures, double crops at least may 
thus be raised, and under the application of the 
ordinary manures crops tenfold greater than 
usual;” and Mr. Bickes says, ‘‘ The discovery of 
cultivating the soil without manure has been 
carefully verified in different countries and in 
the most dissimilar soils. It is not the discovery 
of a mere crude substitute for manure, but rests 
on a knowledge of the nature of plants, by which 
the vital power is increased in all respects, and 
their existence elevated and ennobled. Who can 
assign limits to the growth of a plant? I possess 
dried plants of wheat, consisting of 56 and 57 
stalks; Indian corn, grown in a poor soil, with 3 
or 4 stems and § or 9 heads; sunflowers 11 feet 
high, with flower disks 14 inches in diameter, 
and seeds as large as small coffee beans; potatoes 
above 7 feet high, and tubers in proportion. 
Drift sands have produced crops equal in quality 
to the neighbouring loams. Agriculture can 
now be prosecuted after an entirely new method. 
Manured every year almost without cost, plants 
will develope themselves almost spontaneously, 
and yield the largest returns.” Wild assertions 
like these do enormous harm by deterring cau- 
tious ill-informed farmers from listening to the 
theories and speculations of scientific agricul- 
turists, and by inducing sanguine, unreflecting, 
would-be-learned ones to waste their time and 
money in quixotic experiments, to the neglect 
of sober methods of improvement; and though 
they have, in the present instance, attracted 
great attention and drawn out a large degree of 
both blind opposition and credulous confidence, 
and though too they suggest enough of truth to 
point out new and very promising methods of 
investigation, they are, at the same time, so 
recklessly absurd as to deserve no small measure 
of pity or contempt. A plant.can no more grow 
without food in the soil than a foal or an infant 
can grow without food received into the stomach ; 
and a seed cannot possibly acquire any increase 
of its functional powers except by means which 
shall either protect it from morbific or debilita- 
ting influences, or enrich it with additions to its 
intrinsic stores of nourishment, or excite and 
strengthen it to take up additional supplies of 
food either from the soil and the atmosphere or 
from artificial deposits of manure. 
The real conditiens under which seeds can be 
fertilizingly benefited by any doctoring processes, 
and the true principles on which the invention 
of the best of such processes should be attempted, 
were well-stated, in the following terms, in 1846, 
by Professor Johnston: ‘“ When barley is steeped 
for the purpose of malting, the water, which is 
several times renewed, extracts from it a con- 
siderable proportion both of organic and of in- 
SEED. 171 
tract is rich in alkaline matter and in phosphates, 
all of which must be lost to the seed, and yet it 
sprouts well in the hands of the malster notwith- 
standing. Is the saline matter which the grain 
thus loses necessary to its healthy or perfect 
condition ? Is it necessary to its growth in or- 
dinary soils? Is it a provision of nature by 
which a store of these substances is laid up in 
the seed above what is required for its own per- 
fect development, with the view of meeting the 
emergency of its being placed in a soil in which 
these substances are unusually deficient ? Or 
are we to consider as only accidentally present 
the saline and other compounds which are thus 
easily extracted from it by simple steeping in 
water? ‘These are interesting questions, especi- 
ally to the chemical physiologist ; and it would 
be very interesting to solve them. If the seeds 
sprout and the plants grow as well, and yield as 
good a crop on all soils, after these salts are ex- 
tracted by water, as when the unsteeped seed is 
sown, or seed steeped only in so much water as 
it can absorb, then we may infer that what the 
water extracts is not necessary, and that the seed 
would perform all its natural functions as well 
without their presence. In that case we should 
be justified in concluding that they formed no | 
part of the necessary and natural constitution of | 
a healthy seed.—But if, on the other hand, the 
seed thus exhausted by water grows less vigor- 
ously and yields a small return, then we should be 
justified in concluding, not only that these saline 
matters which water extracts are really neces- 
sary to the perfection of the seed, but in inquir- 
ing whether the seed might not with advantage 
be provided with a larger portion—be benefici- 
ally steeped, that is, in a solution which would 
still further charge it with these saline sub- 
stances, before it was committed to the soil. 
The answer to this inquiry would be obtained 
by steeping the grain in a solution containing 
the same or similar substances to those naturally 
present in the perfect seed. Such a steep would 
be obtained by the use of a mixture consisting 
of phosphate of soda, sulphate of magnesia, ni- 
trate of potash, common salt, and sulphate of 
ammonia. One pound of each of these sub- 
stances dissolved in 10 gallons of water, will be 
sufficient to steep 300 lbs. of seed, which may 
remain in the solution from 30 to 50 hours, and 
should be afterwards dried with gypsum or 
quick lime. The quantity of saline matter above 
prescribed is sufficient to impregnate the grain 
with an additional portion equal to that which 
it naturally contains.—It is possible that after 
the grain has been extracted by water, it may 
again be impregnated beneficially with an arti- 
ficial saline solution, such as that above de- 
scribed, or by a solution of one of the substances 
only of which the mixture is composed—of ni- 
trate or phosphate of soda, for example, or of 
sulphate of soda. Most of these experiments . 
organic matter. The inorganic part of the ex- | bear more or less directly upon practical opera 
