plants are becoming stout, should be deep. Deep hoeing is enough in some cases; but in others, digging is necessary to produce a fine and full crop.

A good garden and plenty of fruits are necessary adjuncts to a good farm. When once arranged and set out, the orchard will soon begin to bring in returns. Small fruits should not be forgotten, and with little care will furnish many delicious dishes for the table, or berries for canning and preserving. In fact, apples, small fruits, and a well kept garden, will supply many things for the family use that cost but a trifle, yet are necessary for health and comfort. The farm, under ordinary conditions, can be made the ideal home, where comfort, intelligence, conservatism, and health may always be found.

CHAPTER VIII.

FERTILIZERS.

BY M. G. ELllzey, M.D.

THE chapter on fertilizers has been assigned to me by the editor-in-chief. I shall endeavor to make it simple, practical, and useful. The value of a fertilizer depends upon the use which is made of it. The fertilization of land must be regarded, not merely as a science, but as both a science and a practical art. The attempt to reduce the deductions of science strictly to practice may result in pecuniary disaster. Practice which does violence to the principles of the science may be temporarily successful, but the final result will be inevitable loss.

It is universally known that land cannot be continuously cropped without deterioration, unless, by some means, the elements of its fertility, removed by the crops, are restored to the soil. This cannot be fully accomplished by hap-hazard and random methods. Systematic practice, based upon scientific principles, is absolutely essential to anything like, complete success. Let us not forget our responsibility as temporary occupiers and users of the national domain. We are bound to acquit ourselves of the charge of spoliation of the natural inheritance of posterity. With a great scientific establishment under control of a department of the national government; with endowed colleges and experiment stations in almost every State, the knowledge of the scientific principles upon which the art of culture must be based is not beyond the reach of any.

The systematic and scientific use of fertilizers is necessarily based on a scientific and systematic farm practice. At the foundation of this lies a systematic, scientific, and judicious rotation of crops. Such a rotation of crops is the foundation of all systematic farming. The rotation must depend upon climate, soil, and access to market. One crop in the rotation, everywhere, should be a resting, or fallow crop, for the recuperation and benefit of the soil; but the fallow-crop may also be of great value for feeding or depasturing, the resulting manure to be

returned also to the field. Manuring by fallows and by animal manures, are merely different methods of returning to the soil a portion of its own product, and so reducing to the lowest practicable point the deportation of the elements of fertility which are sold off the farm. It is true that the fallow plant, during its growth, increases the amount of combined nitrogen in the soil, and thus, if wholly returned to the soil, increases the aggregate fertility. But if the products of the soil be fed out to animals, there will be retained by the animals some of the elements of fertility; and some further loss necessarily occurs in handling the manure. So the feeding of animals, unless a considerable portion of their food be bought and brought onto the farm from outside sources, depletes the soil to some extent, though by feeding out the product of the land upon the land, depletion will be minimized. A complete system of fertilization must embrace a fallow-crop; the feeding of animals, not only with as much as possible of the products of the farm, but also with as large an amount as possible of bought feed; and the fallow and farmyard manure so produced must be supplemented by the skilful use of commercial fertilizers. The formula is in the order of importance: green fallows, animal manures, and commercial fertilizers.

But a scientific system of fertilization may cost more than the product will sell for, and in that case it is simply impracticable.

· Under such circumstances, the pressure of necessity may drive the skilled and scientific farmer to rely upon skill in plundering the soil of its natural fertility, and of transmitting it to those who come after him, in a ruinous condition. Science and practice cannot be divorced, but we must not despoil the national domain, the natural inheritance of posterity, by divine right theirs.

The fallow-crop has called forth much discussion as to its true function and place in agriculture. It appears to be now fully established that the legumes, used for such crops, possess the power to produce combined nitrogen, in connection with certain microbes, during their growth. That growing plants arrest the escape of nitric acid from the soil by leaching, is perfectly clear, for they actively absorb and assimilate it during their growth. This nitric acid of soils is, in small part, of atmospheric

origin; in greater part, the result of the nitric ferment, acting upon the organic matter of the soil. The action of the fallow crop, therefore, results in the considerable increase in the soil of combined nitrogen, available for the nutrition of future crops. The carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen of plants, which in connection with nitrogen constitute the organic parts of all plants, are, as far as is at present known, of atmospheric origin.

The fallow crop cannot, of course, produce ash minerals of plants; nevertheless, its effects upon the condition and position of such minerals in the soil may be, and are, very important. In the first place, the roots of the legumes, as a rule, penetrate the subsoil, whence they draw their mineral food, from depths far below the portion of the soil reached by the plow, or drawn upon by the roots of cereal crops to any great extent. The effect of this is that the fallow plant brings up from the subsoil, and deposits near the surface, within reach of succeeding cereal crops, a large store of mineral food, in precisely that condition easiest of assimilation by the cereals. Moreover, it appears that the legumes possess a much greater power for the absorption and assimilation of the crude and less soluble forms of minerals than is possessed by cereals. The obvious importance of this fact has, I think, been too much overlooked by writers on scientific agriculture. Suppose, for example, we desire to manure a wheat crop with insoluble and crude raw phosphate. Experience establishes the fact that phosphates of that sort are assimilated by wheat with difficulty, and to a limited extent. Let us apply such phosphates to clover, which assimilates them greedily, and brings them into a condition, and into a position in the soil where they are readily reached and assimilated by the wheat which succeeds the clover in rotation. Such a treatment of crude raw phosphate is, in my opinion, more scientific, more economical, and more effectual than chemical treatment of it by the ordinary manipulations with acid and drier, as practised in the manufacture of so-called soluble, or dissolved, or super-phosphates of commerce.

Attention is particularly invited to the point here made. It is believed that herein is disclosed a function of the fallow crop, by no means the least important. In British agriculture, phosphates are not applied to cereals in any form, but only to crops

in the rotation which precede the cereals. In this country, the direct application of phosphates to the cereals may be said to be the universal practice. Is this the best practice? Certainly it may be doubted. This question may well be propounded to our experiment stations.

The effect of the presence of organic matter in our soils is a matter of much importance, profoundly altering, as it does, color, texture, capacity for heat and moisture, and other physical characters. This question must be studied in its relations to the meteorology of the season of active development of our cereals, for it is certain that the conditions of their growth in America are all widely different from those of other countries. It is only necessary to point out that, in England, wheat is seeded during the same weeks as in Maryland and Virginia; whereas we reap ours in June, and they reap theirs in September. This is obviously due to different meteorological conditions there and here; but it shows that we cannot accept, as applicable here, the results of their experience, or deductions from their data, until fully tested with us. The results of English, French, or German experiments may prove misleading here, and cannot be safely adopted without strict verification, subject to all the conditions which prevail with us. I believe that the importance of abundant organic matter in the soil is very much greater in this country than in either of those. The results. obtained with chemical salts, by their experimenters, have never been equalled here, nor do I believe it to be possible. The huge rains, alternating with intense sunshine and parching heat, which prevail here in late spring and early summer, have no counterpart there. The effects of such alternations are of themselves disastrous, and are greatly intensified by the absence of abundant organic matter, the effect of which is to intensify the injury to crops by parching heat and drought, and by leaching rains. Abundant organic matter increases the hygroscopic powers of the soil, or its retentiveness of moisture, and lessens its capacity for heat. In view of the foregoing facts, the conclusion is easily reached that the weak point of American agriculture is the depletion of our arable land of organic matter, resulting from the too exclusive reliance upon commercial fer