Читать книгу The American Reformed Cattle Doctor - George H. Dadd - Страница 10

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It is a well-known fact that plants require for their germination and growth different constituents of soil, and that animals require different forms of food to build up the waste, and promote the living integrity—the vital powers.

Its order to supply the materials necessary for animal and vegetable nutrition, we require alternate changes—the former in the diet, and the latter in the soil. Experience has proved that the cultivation of a plant for several successive years on the same soil impoverishes it, or the plant degenerates. On the contrary, if a piece of land be suffered to lie uncultivated for a short time, it will yield, in spite of the loss of time, a greater quantity of grain; for, during the interval of rest, the soil regains its original equilibrium. It has been satisfactorily demonstrated that a fruit-tree cannot be made to grow and bring forth good fruit on the same spot where another of the same species has stood; at least not until a lapse of years. This is a fact worth knowing, for it applies more or less to all forms of vegetation. Another fact of experience is, that some plants thrive on the same soil only after a lapse of years, while others may be cultivated in close succession, provided the soil is kept in equilibrium by artificial means; these are subsoiling, &c. Some kinds of plants improve the sod, while others impoverish or exhaust it. Professor Liebig tells us, "turnips, cabbages, beets, oats, and rye are considered to belong to the class which impoverish the soil; while by wheat, hops, madder, hemp, and poppies, it is supposed to be entirely exhausted." Many of our farmers expend large sums of money in the purchase of manure, with a view of improving the soil; and they suppose that their crops will be abundant in proportion to the amount of manure; yet many have discovered that, in spite of the extra expense and labor, the produce of their farms decreased.

The alternation of crops seems destined to effect a great change in agriculture. A French chemist informs us that the roots of plants imbibe matter of every kind from the soil, and thus necessarily abstract a number of substances, which are not adapted to the purposes of nutrition, and that they are ultimately expelled by the excretory vessels, and return to the soil as excrement. The excrementitious portion of the food also returns to the soil. Now, as excrement cannot be assimilated by the same animal or plant that ejected it, without danger to the organs of digestion or eliminations, it follows that the more vegetable excrement the soil contains, the more unfitted must it be for plants of the same species; yet these excrementitious matters may, however, still be capable of assimilation by another kind of plant, which would absorb them from the soil, and render it again fertile for the first. In connection with this, it has been observed that several plants will flourish when growing beside each other; but it is not good policy to sow two kinds of seed together: on the other hand, some plants mutually prevent each other's development. The same happens if young cattle are suffered to graze and sleep in the barn together; the one lives at the expense of the other, which soon shows evidences of disease. The injurious effects of permitting young children to sleep with aged relatives are known to many of our readers; yet some parents see their children sicken and die without knowing the why or wherefore. From such facts as these,—which we might multiply to an indefinite extent, were it necessary,—we learn that nature's laws are immutable and uncompromising; and woe be to the man that transgresses them: they are a part of the divine law, which cannot be set at nought with impunity.

Ignorance on these important subjects has existed too long: yet we perceive in the distant horizon a ray of intellectual light, streaming through our schools and agricultural societies. The result will be, that succeeding generations will be better acquainted with nature's laws, from which shall flow untold blessings. Chemistry teaches us that animals and vegetables are composed of a vast number of different compounds, which are nearly all produced by the same elementary principles. Vegetables consist of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; and the same substances, with the addition of nitrogen, are the principal constituents of the animal economy. In a word, all the constituents of animal creation have actually been discovered in vegetables: this has, we presume, led to the conclusion that "all flesh is grass."

Many horticulturists complain that certain fruits and seeds have "run out," or degenerated. Has the stately oak, the elm, or the cedar degenerated? No. Each has preserved its identity, and will continue so to do, at least just as the Divine Artist intended they should, unless man, by his fancied improvements, interferes; and here, reader, permit us to ask if you ever knew a piece of nature's mechanism improved by human agency. Can we make a light better adapted to the wants of animate and inanimate creation than that which the sun, moon, and stars afford? Whenever we attempt to improve on immutable laws, as they are written on the face of creation, that moment we prevent the full and free play of these laws. Hence the practice of grafting scions of delicious fruit-trees on stock of an inferior order compromises its identity; and successive crops will show unmistakable evidences of encroachment. A son of the lamented Mr. Phinney tells us that he had some very fine sows, that he was desirous of breeding from, with a view of making "improvements." He bred in a close degree of relationship: in a short time, to use his own expression, "their sides appeared like two boards nailed together." Does the farmer wish to know how to prevent seeds and fruit "running out"? Let him study chemistry. Chemistry furnishes the information; it also teaches the husbandman the fact, that to put a plant, composed of certain essential elements, on a soil destitute of those elements,—or to graft a scion, requiring a certain amount of sap or juice, on a stock destitute of such sap or juice, expecting that they will germinate, grow to perfection, and preserve their identity,—would be just as absurd as to expect that a dry sow would nourish a sucking pig.

Agriculture being based on the equilibrium of the soils, a knowledge of chemistry is indispensable to every one who is desirous of keeping pace with the reforms of the age; for it is through the medium of that science alone that we are enabled to ascertain with certainty how this equilibrium is disturbed by the growth of vegetation. Then is it not a matter of deep interest to the farmer to know how this equilibrium is restored?

Does the farmer wish to know what kind of soil is necessary to nourish and mature a plant? Chemistry solves the problem. Does the farmer wish to know how to improve the soil? Let him refer to chemistry. Chemistry will teach the farmer how to analyze the soil; by that means he will learn which of the constituent elements of the plants and soil are constant, and which are changeable. By making an analysis of the soil at different periods, through the process of germination, growth, and maturity, we are enabled to ascertain the amount of excretory elements given out. Bergman tells us that he found, by analysis, in "100 parts of fertile soil, coarse silex 30 parts, silecia 30 parts, carbonate of lime 30 parts:" hence the fertility of the soil diminishes in proportion as one or the other of these elements predominates.

Ashes of wheat contain, among other elementary substances, 48 parts of silecia. Now, what farmer could expect to raise a good crop of wheat from a soil destitute of silecious earth, since this earth constitutes a large amount of the earthy part of wheat? There is no barrier to agricultural improvement so effectual as for farmers to continue their old customs purely because their forefathers did so. But prejudices are fast dying away before the rays of intellectual illumination; the farmers are fast seceding from the supposed infallibles of their forefathers, and will soon become "book" as well as practical husbandmen. "Book farming," assisted by practical knowledge, teaches that manures require admixture of milder materials to mitigate their force; for some of them communicate a disgusting or offensive quality to vegetables. They are charged with imparting a biting and acrimonious taste to radishes and turnips. Potatoes and grapes are known to borrow the foul taint of the ground. Millers observe a strong, disagreeable odor in the meal of wheat that grew upon land highly charged with the rotten recrements of cities. Stable dung is known to impart a disagreeable flavor to vegetables.

The same effects may be illustrated in the animal kingdom. Ducks are rendered so ill tasted from stuffing down garbage as sometimes to be offensive to the palate when cooked. The quality of pork is known by the food of the swine, and the peculiar flavor of water-fowl is rationally traced to the fish they devour. Thus a portion of the elements of manure and nutrimental matter passes into the living bodies without being entirely subdued. For example, we can alter the color of the cow's milk by mixing madder or saffron in the food; the odor may be influenced by garlic; the flavor may be altered by pine and wormwood; and lastly, the medicinal effect may be influenced.

In the cultivation of grass the farmer will find it to his advantage to cultivate none but the best kinds; the whole pasture lands will then be filled with valuable grass seeds. The number of grass seeds worth cultivating is but few, and these should be sown separately. It is bad policy to sow different kinds of grass seed together—just as bad as to sow wheat, oats, turnips, and corn promiscuously.

The reason why the farmers, as a community, will be benefited by sowing none but the best seed is, because grass seeds are distributed through neighboring pastures by the winds, and there take root. Now, if the neighboring pastures abound in inferior grasses, the fields will soon be filled with useless plants, which are very difficult to be got rid of. We refer those of our readers who desire to make themselves acquainted with animal chemistry to Professor Liebig's work on that science.