Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1875-10-01

agriculture presents no problem more
difficult of solution than that of restoring
fruitfulness to an impoverished field in
the most economical way. A practice
that will do the best in one soil and eli
pate may signally fail where the condi-
bns and substances are entirely different.
In the matter of soils and subsoils, parent
rocks, climates and plants, nature de-
lights in an endless variety. Hence our
best /rules for practice have necessarily
many exceptions. We will state facts
briefly, and let the reader draw his own
Conclusions from them how one can best
restore fertility or impart it to land that
is naturally poor, and it may be, nearly
worthless.
Wood ashes and land plaster have been
used about hundred years in this coun-
try to increase the fertility of land, and
both have stood the test of this long ex-
perience- Col. Wilder, of Massachusetts,
is reported as saying, at public agricul
tural discussion, that he regarded good
ashes as worth so cents bushel to apply
to the common poor lands of New Eng
land. Others of much experience in their
use spoke in high terms in favor of ashes
as top dressing for meadows and pas
lures. Some use plaster and others salt, or
both with ashes, on clover and other plants
at large profit. Simple and truthful
farmers who understand their full mean
ing as compared with the stable and cow
yard manure. AS general fact not over
two or three parts in hundred, and often
less, are incombustible in the soil drop
pings of farm stock. There is no part of
cow-dung or plants that rise into the air
when either decomposes, which will not
fall again as plant food to the earth in
rain and dew. Ifthis were not so it would
be impossible for wood ashes, plaster and
soluable phosphates to act precisely like
good stable manure. Most obviously good
mineral fertilizers are nothing but the best
manure with the volatile or gaseous parts
left out.
The venerable Mr.. D. Lee, writing in
the Country Gentleman on this subject says
that for sixty years he has observed the
fertiizing power of plaster, ashes and
lime and it has been about that length of
time since Sir Humphrey Davy, Black and
other chemists taught confidently that
plants were composed of combustible car
bon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. Be
fore Leibig wrote word on agriculture,
the fact that decaying forest leaves send
millions of tons of carbon yearly into the
atmosphere suggested to others as well as
to him that this carbon in some way re-
turned into new plant growth. For him.
self the writer had no doubt when a stu
dent fifty years ago, that plants fed large
ly on air and water, like moss growing on
rock. The farmer must learn to utilize
in thousand ways this power in clover,
grass and other plants to organize air and
water, that will cost him next to nothing,
and convert them into staple crops. In an
address before the Monroe County Agri-
cultural Society, in October, 1856, and
published in the Genesse Farmer, Mr.. Lee
said: Il regard it as one of the greatest
discoveries of the age, that about ninety
seven per cent. of the ingredients which
make up the whole substance of wheat,
rye, barley, corn, beans and peas exist in
the air in inexhaustible quantities. To
transmute these @riform bodies into the
plants above named, into grass and roots,
at the smallest expense, is the object of
nearly all your work"
He now reiterates that what he regard
ed thirty years ago as "the greatest dis
covery of the age" not yet come home to
the knowledge or appreciation of Ameri-
can farmers. In 1915, when secretary of
New York State Agricultural Society, he
lectured in nearly half the counties of that
State on the above and kindred topics,
but the idea of making agriculture a
science and a learned profession. was gen
orally regarded as the dream of vision
ary.-Rock Rice,' Furmer. $50