The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-09-08
AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY.

| All good soils contain within them
selves fertilizing elements sufficient to
| bring forth good crops for hundreds of
years.
A wise providence has withheld from
man the ability to exhaust land more
than to limited extent.
The farmer can, indeed, so far ex-
haust the land as to render it incapable
| of producing a crop that will be re-
munerative, but even when such is the
case there is an amount of latent fer
| tility left sufficient to sustain the popu-
lation for ages.
To instruct the farmer how econom-
ically to develop this latent fertility
and maintain it in his land is the aim
and object of agricultural chemistry. 1t
| is the interest of the farmer and also
of the state to maintain land in a. pro-
ftable, productive condition, and yet
lands in the old states have become
| lessened in fertility to a serious extent,
and in the newer states the same sys-
tenn of exhaustive cultivation is pur-
sued, and like results will in time fol-
low.
The widespread maltreatment of land
must certainly have it's origin in false
conceptions of the use of land, and the
improper management of it flows from
that false conception.
Land properly treated will increase
in fertility and in aptness to bring
forth fruitfully, because the elements
of fertility are being not only gradually
developed, but those that are free do
progress. Chemical action in soils may
unfold the rich treasures thereof and
mechanical appliances render their eff
fective aid, but if wrong conceptions of
the use of land continue all means used
to increase its fertility will leave it
more hopelessiy exhausted than before.
Land was given to live on, and what
ever is taken from it as food should
be returned as manure. Land so
treated will increase in fertility, but
land continually under the plow not
only loses the mechanical condition
favorable to fruitfulness, but insect
life is thereby greatly increased. Very
minute creatures attack the tender
plants, and sometimes crop will
nearly be destroyed, while the same
kind of plants, the same season. on
land less injuriously treated, will yield
a remuneratiVe crop.
Let land be properly dealt with, and
chemistry will then come to the aid
of cultivators of the soil, teaching them
how to strengthen the growth of their
plants, how to hasten the time of ripen-
ing. how to improve the quality of
their grain, and to increase the aroma
of fruit, and how to cause soils now
yielding inferior plants to bring forth
superior ones 1t teaches that aka
lies give strength and stability to the
stalk, that the phosphateS hasten ma
turity, that lime renders peas more
melting, potatoes more mealy, and has
changed rye lands into wheat-growing
fields. 1t will also tell us of the action
of carbonic acid gas on the small par
ticles of rocky matter in the soil, and
what chemical changes result from the
frequent admission of common air into
the ground in the process of cultiva-
ton.
There is much land worn out by bad
management and so located that to
bring it into condition with barnyard
manure is out of the question, as it
takes time with barnyard manure to
get lands again into condition, where
as by the use of artificial fertilizers
lands may be made at once to produce
paying crops AS long as farm has not
reached the highest point of cultivation
every means must be pronounced ac-
ceptable which puts the farmer in
positi provide his fields with more