The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1859-03-24

yield 10 bushels per acre. 1t is o common
opinion that our Western soils are mex
haustible; but that is a most unfortunate
mistake. Let US look at the statistics of the
declining wheat crops of Ohio. The average
yield in 1850 was 1t bushels per acre in
1851, Is; and in 1852, under IA. Has the
average yield increased since? These facts
are true of more States than Ohio. From
1910 to 1850 the crop of wheat in New Eng
land fell one million of bushels. Upward of
six million bushels more wheat were grown
in Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, in
1910, than in 1850. and probably more in
1850 than they will raise in 1860, though the
land in cultivation and the population of the
States will have been doubled.
There are no other causes for these unfor-
tunate results but an ignorant and wasteful
system of cultivation. We are empires
dealing with nature and attempting to CO.
operate with her in the most delicate and
profoundest processes of her vast chemical
labratory, without a single intelligent no
ton of the elements on which the work is
to be done, or the effects of the means used
to produce the results. Men go into the
Creators laboratory where the grand pro-
cesses of all sources are in harmonious
operation, and with presumptive ignorance
undertake to alter all its machinery, to
guide and change all its works, while they
should stand in ignorant amazement in the
Migratory of the human chemist, fearful to
touch an element or disturb process lest
they should mar the result. In the petty
experiments of men, they should feel their
incapacity to do anything without instruc-
ton but in the grander works of nature,
they rely upon their short sighted experience,
and seek no knowledge of her laws and re-
ject all instruction. A party vote is record
ed in the Legislature against geological
survey of the State the representatives of
this Congressional District and the Senators
of Indiana vote against, and the President
vetoes bill for the foundation of AgricLl-
tural Colleges that might reveal and dissem-
mate the knowledge so essential to arrest
the alarming deterioration of lands, because,
as the President says, placeholders-the
cormorants of corruption-need the money
from the public lands, and because, as he
states, it is conference.-the to use the
means of the Government to instruct the
people in any of their social and material
interests. Ignorance is too essential an
element of the power of such men as Nib
lack, Bright and Fitch, for them to vote for
its removal, or deny its democracy.
These bogii Democrats of Indiana are OPP
posed, too, to protecting home industry by
tariffs that would bring our workshops and
factories to the wheat fields and avoid the
expectation Of the fertilizing elements OF
our crops and the alarming decline of our
harvests. No region of country, however
fertile, can endure for many generations the
expectation of its raw agricultural products
even in the concentrated form of meats
and grains-without the loss of its fertility.
An intelligent agricultural chemist at the
East writing on the subject, says:
The bones of animals coming into the
large cities bring phosphates at railroad
speed from the Great West Grain is car
ried to the cities, and the substances that
made it are far away from their original
source. The wheat crop of 1858 robbed the
soil of more than thirty millions of pounds
of potash, and sixty millions of pounds Of
phosphoric acid. But small proportion OF
these elements are sent back to the soil. in
natures economy nothing is lost; but when
, man displaces things he should put them
back again to their own places. A wise ma
ton looks well to its agriculture, the great
J source of wealth. England dug the fields
} OF Waterloo for human bones to enrich her
? soil. She sent her ships to foreign nations
to bring home fertilizers. In our agriculture
we are wasteful and soil-exhausting people
We treat our rich heritage as if we were
but tenants of it for life, and had no interest
in the happiness and prosperity of our sue.
cessors. Many of our lands have been SC
treated, that, although the soil appears still
to be rich, they have lost some one of The
) elements that are essential to the growth o.
grain. The have become unbalanced ant
deficient in some important ingredient
science alone can discover the loss and di
rect its restoration. A knowledge of ag,ri
cultural chemistry, and an acquaintance
with the chemical ingredients of the soil OF
which he works, has become essential t.
every farmer who hopes to succeed in hi:
calling; science must be made the guide o
the farmer, and we must abandon the blind
empirical mode of farming-scarcely NOR
intelligent than that of the uncivilized In
dian, who places the seed in the ground AM
instead of manuring and cultivating 1t, re
sorts to incantations and adjura tions to SC
cure from his idols harvest. An uned
ucated farmer scatters the seed upon tn
. ground, without knowing what quantities c
II nutriment, if any, there are in it for the su:
> tenance of the plant sown, but piously trust
i the result to Providence. If the harves
g fails-when sown on a soil as barren of ele
ments to sustain it as naked granite rock