The Portland daily press., 1869-02-16
DAILY PRESS.
ND.
Tuesday Morning, February I6, 1869.

PORTLAND.

that many plants will flourish in very bar
rem soil. They will grow on the surface of a
rock, and in the crevices of rocks they have
quite luxuriant growth Some plants will
| also grow suspended in the air without touch
ing the earth with single root. A little book
of chemistry recently published in Boston
says: "That even plants which demand a
rich soil are indirectly indebted to the air for
what they draw from the EARTH" The soil
owes its fertility to the decomposition of or
ganic matter. And the QUESTION arises how
was this organic matter originally produced?
The answer is, that it was produced by plants
which had no rich soil to draw from, but
were dependent mainly for their growth on
air.
From such facts many valuable lessons
may be drawn. The atmosphere is the store
house from which plants, directly or indirect
ly, obtain a large portion of that aliment
which sustains vegetable life. The little man.
ual alluded to above says: "Ihe portion
which is purely of earthly origin is always in
significant, and often it is nothing at alp
The truth is, plants give to the earth far more
than they get from it. And this is made very
evident from the fact that vegetable organic
matter accumulates very fast in soil where
vegetation is undisturbed by the plow or hoe
from year to year. And the more rank and
luxuriant the vegetation is, the more rapidly
this deposit of organic matter increases
This additional fresh matter which plants
give to the soil is drawn from the surround
ing atmosphere, so that the soil and the air
are brought into profitable relationship
through the instrumentalities of plants. In
virgin forests a rich deep soil is often found,
and yet numberless trees have been drawing
nourishment from it for centuries.
A tree has recently been found in Austria
lia, which is nearly five hundred feet high,
reaching as far into the air as the largest
pyramid of Egypt, and yet this mon
strous tree has not impoverished the soil in
which the roots have lived for CENTURIES
Those large trees in California which are the
wonder of the world, have been living on the
soifor many centuries, but they have given
back to itquite as much as they have received.
Our own majestic pines have been equally
generous 20 the soil that sustained them until
theax of the lumberman cut them down. And
where they grew the cultivator has exhaust
ed the soil, carrying away the crop from the
fed with all the elements IT has taken from
the earth and the air. Unless the farmer
follows the example ofnature and restores to
the soil what his crops have drawn from it ,he
will fail
We will mention but three ways in which
this renewal of the soil may be Obtained
First, by such manures as the soil needs to
restore it to fertility. Now everybody knows
this, but everybody does not practice what
they preach do as well as they know. Sec
ond, fertility may be obtained by letting the
held lie Jdll0ao, but when the cultivator has
but little land he can't afford to let his land
remain idle. In falow lands we are told that
the inorganic materials of the soil are main
ly furnished by the gradual disintegration of
the rocks, and this process is constantly go
ing on under the influence of the oxygen and
carbonic acid of the air aided by the rains and
changes of the temperature. By this chemi-
cal process of nature, fresh portions of the
AOSno VI vi OuClL luluo dcC ICuucIcu SOluUlc
and thus fitted for the nourishment of the
plants.
The third way is an alienation of crops.
There is sound philosophy in this mode of
| cultivation. Some farmers have learned that
wheat and potatoes may be raised on the
same ground in alternate years, the wheat
requiring large amount of silica and aka
| line matter, while potatoes do not require
such food, for while these tubers are growing
the renewal of the soluble silica continually
advances. The authority we have quoted
says: "Some soils abound in silicates so
readily decomposed that in every one or two
years sufficient supply for crop of wheat
becomes soluble" In other soils this chemi-
cal process is much slower, and the amount
OF soluble silica required for a crop of wheat
| Is not separated from the insoluble masses in
the soil in less than three or four years.
1t is an interesting fact that there are large
districts in Hungary where wheat and tobac-
co have been raised in the same soil alter
natey for centuries, the land never receiving
back any of the mineral matter which is car
ried away with the crops. This soil abounds
in silicates which readily decbmpose Thus
we perceive the necessity and importance of
studying the nature of the soil in order to
successful cultivation and growth of crops
The more farmer learns, the more he stud
| les the inexorable laws of nature, and the
more he watches the chemical processes in
earth and air which are constantly going on
around him, the more conscious he win be
that he has only picked up few pebbles up
on the shore of the great ocean that is spread
| out before him.