It is a well-known fact that plants require for their germination and
growth different constituents of soil, and that animals require
different forms of food to build up the waste, and promote the living
integrity--the vital powers.
Its order to supply the materials necessary for animal and vegetable
nutrition, we require alternate changes--the former in the diet, and the
latter in the soil. Experience has proved that the cultivation of a
plant for several successive years on the same soil impoverishes it, or
the plant degenerates. On the contrary, if a piece of land be suffered
to lie uncultivated for a short time, it will yield, in spite of the
loss of time, a greater quantity of grain; for, during the interval of
rest, the soil regains its original equilibrium. It has been
satisfactorily demonstrated that a fruit-tree cannot be made to grow and
bring forth good fruit on the same spot where another of the same
species has stood; at least not until a lapse of years. This is a fact
worth knowing, for it applies more or less to all forms of vegetation.
Another fact of experience is, that some plants thrive on the same soil
only after a lapse of years, while others may be cultivated in close
succession, _provided the soil is kept in equilibrium by artificial
means_; these are subsoiling, &c. Some kinds of plants improve the sod,
while others impoverish or exhaust it. Professor Liebig tells us,
"turnips, cabbages, beets, oats, and rye are considered to belong to the
class which impoverish the soil; while by wheat, hops, madder, hemp, and
poppies, it is supposed to be entirely exhausted." Many of our farmers
expend large sums of money in the purchase of manure, with a view of
improving the soil; and they suppose that their crops will be abundant
in proportion to the amount of manure; yet many have discovered that, in
spite of the extra expense and labor, the produce of their farms
decreased.
The alternation of crops seems destined to effect a great change in
agriculture. A French chemist informs us that the roots of plants imbibe
matter of every kind from the soil, and thus necessarily abstract a
number of substances, which are not adapted to the purposes of
nutrition, and that they are ultimately expelled by the excretory
vessels, and return to the soil as excrement. The excrementitious
portion of the food also returns to the soil. Now, as excrement cannot
be assimilated by the same animal or plant that ejected it, without
danger to the organs of digestion or eliminations, it follows that the
more vegetable excrement the soil contains, the more unfitted must it be
for plants of the same species; yet these excrementitious matters may,
however, still be capable of assimilation by another kind of plant,
which would absorb them from the soil, and render it again fertile for
the first. In connection with this, it has been observed that several
plants will flourish when growing beside each other; but it is not good
policy to sow two kinds of seed together: on the other hand, some plants
mutually prevent each other's development. The same happens if young
cattle are suffered to graze and sleep in the barn together; the one
lives at the expense of the other, which soon shows evidences of
disease. The injurious effects of permitting young children to sleep
with aged relatives are known to many of our readers; yet some parents
see their children sicken and die without knowing the why or wherefore.
From such facts as these,--which we might multiply to an indefinite
extent, were it necessary,--we learn that nature's laws are immutable
and uncompromising; and woe be to the man that transgresses them: they
are a part of the divine law, which cannot be set at nought with
impunity.
Ignorance on these important subjects has existed too long: yet we
perceive in the distant horizon a ray of intellectual light, streaming
through our schools and agricultural societies. The result will be, that
succeeding generations will be better acquainted with nature's laws,
from which shall flow untold blessings. Chemistry teaches us that
animals and vegetables are composed of a vast number of different
compounds, which are nearly all produced by the same elementary
principles. Vegetables consist of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; and the
same substances, with the addition of nitrogen, are the principal
constituents of the animal economy. In a word, all the constituents of
animal creation have actually been discovered in vegetables: this has,
we presume, led to the conclusion that "all flesh is grass."
Many horticulturists complain that certain fruits and seeds have "_run
out_," or degenerated. Has the stately oak, the elm, or the cedar
degenerated? No. Each has preserved its identity, and will continue so
to do, at least just as the Divine Artist intended they should, unless
man, by his fancied improvements, interferes; and here, reader, permit
us to ask if you ever knew a piece of nature's mechanism improved by
human agency. Can we make a light better adapted to the wants of
animate and inanimate creation than that which the sun, moon, and stars
afford? Whenever we attempt to improve on immutable laws, as they are
written on the face of creation, that moment we prevent the full and
free play of these laws. Hence the practice of grafting scions of
delicious fruit-trees on stock of an inferior order compromises its
identity; and successive crops will show unmistakable evidences of
encroachment. A son of the lamented Mr. Phinney tells us that he had
some very fine sows, that he was desirous of breeding from, with a view
of making "improvements." He bred in a close degree of relationship: in
a short time, to use his own expression, "their sides appeared like two
boards nailed together." Does the farmer wish to know how to prevent
seeds and fruit "running out"? Let him study chemistry. Chemistry
furnishes the information; it also teaches the husbandman the fact, that
to put a plant, composed of certain essential elements, on a soil
destitute of those elements,--or to graft a scion, requiring a certain
amount of sap or juice, on a stock destitute of such sap or juice,
expecting that they will germinate, grow to perfection, and preserve
their identity,--would be just as absurd as to expect that a dry sow
would nourish a sucking pig.
Agriculture being based on the equilibrium of the soils, a knowledge of
chemistry is indispensable to every one who is desirous of keeping pace
with the reforms of the age; for it is through the medium of that
science alone that we are enabled to ascertain with certainty how this
equilibrium is disturbed by the growth of vegetation. Then is it not a
matter of deep interest to the farmer to know how this equilibrium is
restored?
Does the farmer wish to know what kind of soil is necessary to nourish
and mature a plant? Chemistry solves the problem. Does the farmer wish
to know how to improve the soil? Let him refer to chemistry. Chemistry
will teach the farmer how to analyze the soil; by that means he will
learn which of the constituent elements of the plants and soil are
constant, and which are changeable. By making an analysis of the soil
at different periods, through the process of germination, growth, and
maturity, we are enabled to ascertain the amount of excretory elements
given out. Bergman tells us that he found, by analysis, in "100 parts of
fertile soil, coarse silex 30 parts, silecia 30 parts, carbonate of lime
30 parts:" hence the fertility of the soil diminishes in proportion as
one or the other of these elements predominates.
Ashes of wheat contain, among other elementary substances, 48 parts of
silecia. Now, what farmer could expect to raise a good crop of wheat
from a soil destitute of silecious earth, since this earth constitutes a
large amount of the earthy part of wheat? There is no barrier to
agricultural improvement so effectual as for farmers to continue their
old customs purely because their forefathers did so. But prejudices are
fast dying away before the rays of intellectual illumination; the
farmers are fast seceding from the supposed infallibles of their
forefathers, and will soon become "book" as well as practical
husbandmen. "Book farming," assisted by practical knowledge, teaches
that manures require admixture of milder materials to mitigate their
force; for some of them communicate a disgusting or offensive quality to
vegetables. They are charged with imparting a biting and acrimonious
taste to radishes and turnips. Potatoes and grapes are known to borrow
the foul taint of the ground. Millers observe a strong, disagreeable
odor in the meal of wheat that grew upon land highly charged with the
rotten recrements of cities. Stable dung is known to impart a
disagreeable flavor to vegetables.
The same effects may be illustrated in the animal kingdom. Ducks are
rendered so ill tasted from stuffing down garbage as sometimes to be
offensive to the palate when cooked. The quality of pork is known by the
food of the swine, and the peculiar flavor of water-fowl is rationally
traced to the fish they devour. Thus a portion of the elements of manure
and nutrimental matter passes into the living bodies without being
entirely subdued. For example, we can alter the color of the cow's milk
by mixing madder or saffron in the food; the odor may be influenced by
garlic; the flavor may be altered by pine and wormwood; and lastly, the
medicinal effect may be influenced.
In the cultivation of grass the farmer will find it to his advantage to
cultivate none but the best kinds; the whole pasture lands will then be
filled with valuable grass seeds. The number of grass seeds worth
cultivating is but few, and these should be sown separately. It is bad
policy to sow different kinds of grass seed together--just as bad as to
sow wheat, oats, turnips, and corn promiscuously.
The reason why the farmers, as a community, will be benefited by sowing
none but the best seed is, because grass seeds are distributed through
neighboring pastures by the winds, and there take root. Now, if the
neighboring pastures abound in inferior grasses, the fields will soon be
filled with useless plants, which are very difficult to be got rid of.
We refer those of our readers who desire to make themselves acquainted
with animal chemistry to Professor Liebig's work on that science.