The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1878-01-10
The study OF E5nnge.

The study OF EsnRge.
The leading article in the December
number of the American Farmer, from
the pen of L. II. McGinnis, discusses
ably the question, Chow does plant food
escape from the cultivated soil ?" The
writer remarks: GAS to how the great
body goes, it could hardly be a subject
of doubt with any farmer who has ever
had the fortune or mis- ortune to be
s1ught On plowed field during a heavy
rainfall, where he must have seen it
plant food runnin2 off in channels,
every furrow forming a rivulet more
rapidly than 100 men could carry it on"
The above strikes boldly at a TACT to
which we have often called public Stten-
ton, and especially in an essay on the
PHILOSOPHY of tillage," published some
thirty years ago in the Transactions oil
the New York State Agricultural socie,
ty. Tillage places soil in the best pos
sible nd ton to be thoroughly washed
and secured by many rains which send
its fertilizing elements into brooks,
creeks. rivers and the ocean. Mr. MEG
says: '.IE general plant food applied to
| soil is lost neither by sinking nor evaps-
ration, nor by both together" He thinks
that less than one tenth of the loss re-
! suits from the removal of crops.
This is probably an underestimate.
All know that meadows and pastures are
impoverished by moving and grazing
| where there is no blowing, while annual
! crops of gra,s are taken off the land
| Depletion and ultimate barrenness follow
the removal of rich agricultural
plants without tillage. But let us ex-
anime the exhaustion of soils a little
farther. Our author makes this quite
unusual statement: 81 have never seen
| the subject of exhaustion usefully. in
diligently, or decently treated in any
book. My heart sorrows at the prospect
OF dying without the sight" He adds:
eff no such book exists, the shame is
universal-a million times more .han ]
can ever feel. / believe the question of
exhaustion to be of greater moment
| especially to farmers, than any other
Expectation of crops, the principal, if
not the only, reasons assigned and elabO-
rated by writers-in my opinion does
| not take five pounds in leo pounds of
what the soil loses"
River bottoms, deltas, CULTS, and the
sea receive the dissolved and solid parts
| of farms denuded, depleted or rendered
sterile by the labor of man according to
| this student of agriculture.
That the p!ow desolates the soil by the
million acres, we have no doubt; but how
TO stop it under our low type of civiliza-
tion and intelligence is the grand cues
ton. All men can no more be wise,
prudent or thoughtful than they can be
angels. The element do most to create
i good soils for man and beast, and do most
also to destroy them. Old continents
wear out by the action of frost and the
friction of rain and diss. living snow
which carry them as mud into the
ocean, whether man tills the ground OF
not. Tillage, however, hastens the re-
moval of fertilizing atoms.
Let these precious atoms be as well
known to CAPITALISTS as iron, coal and
gold, and capital in a virgin soil will
be better husbanded than it now is, not
perhaps, for the benefit of the husband.
man, but to increase the income of the
bOndnolders and creditor class generally
The misers of the cities do not see the
wealth buried in their sewers, else thew
would coin it into gold paying national
bonds Concentrated manure paws q
better interest than any other property
in the present age. 1t Is the power OF
production brought to focus.