xt7gf18sbv4p https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7gf18sbv4p/data/mets.xml Peter, Robert, 1805-1894. 1861  books b96-11-34700651 English Printed at the Yeoman Office, J.B. Major, state printer, : [Frankfort : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Geology, Economic Analysis. Fourth chemical report of the soils, marls, ores, rocks, coals, iron furnace products, mineral waters, etc., etc., of Kentucky  / by Robert Peter. text Fourth chemical report of the soils, marls, ores, rocks, coals, iron furnace products, mineral waters, etc., etc., of Kentucky  / by Robert Peter. 1861 2002 true xt7gf18sbv4p section xt7gf18sbv4p 














          FOURTH CHEMICAL REPORT







SOILS, MARLS, ORES, ROCKS, COALS,



IRON FURNACE PRODUCTS, MINERAL WATERS, ETC., ETC.,



           CO F  K E x Tw  t C xY ,





        R0BERT PETX:R. .MI. D.. etc..



CHEMICAL AS5ISTANT TO THE GEOLOGICAL SURVfY.

 This page in the original text is blank.

 


                  INTRODUCTORY LETTER.






      CancAL LABORATORY OF THE KNTUCKY GEOLOGICAL SURVEY,
                              LEXINGTON, Kr., February 4th, 1860.
D. D. Owen, i; D.:
   DEAa Sm: According to your instructions, I herewith transmit to
you the report of the chemical work done in my laboratory, for the
Kentucky Geological Survey, since the publication of the third volume.
   This report embodies the results of more than five hundred analyses,
as follows, viz:
Of soils, &c., from the Lower Silrian groxp -__-__-_-.-____-0-- 59
Of soils, &c., from the Upper Silurian group  .-_--_.-_-_-_-.__-__-__-23
Of soils, &c., from the Devonian group --_-_-___-- ----- ___-_-__-_-___- 27
Of soils, &c., from the sub-carboniferoua group_ _-___-.-_---- __ 32
Of sails, &c, from the coal measure group_ _-_-__-_-_----___ - 25
Of soils, &c., from Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin -_---   7
                                                                  _    172
Of limestones, hydraulic and common_. __.. _ _ __-___-_____-_-_---- -- -  75
or iron ores of the limonite variety -__-_-_.-_-_-_-.-___-- - -   75
Of iron ores;-carbonate of iron  __-- __-_-_-_-_-_-_--- - -     25
Of coals -_--                                                           36
Of sandstones, shales, elays, &c-.-_-_- __.-__-_-_- __-- - -    28
Of iron furnaee slags ------------------------- - -                     22
Of pigiron__              ---------------------------- -- - -- -        31
Of mineral wates ------__-__-_--                                        20
Of remains of mastodon, &c., &c., &c. _-_-___-_-__-- - -         7
Of asbes of variouasamples of tobacco _-_-_- _--- -  -          30
Of ashes of wbeat, Indian corn and cob, wine, &c. ____-_-__-_-_---- - --   8

                                                                       529
  In all, five hundred and twenty-nine analyses, made during the past
two years of the survey.
  The forwarding of the report has been a little delayed by an effort
which I have made to reduce its size. Finding, after some fifty pages
had been prepared, that it was likely to be quite voluminous, I adopted
the plan of tabulating the results of the analyses of the soils; ores, &c,
&c., which came from the same locality, thus greatly reducing its magni-
          6

 

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.



tude and facilitating comparison. It was necessary, therefore, to re-write
the first portion, according to this plan. I have also, as usual, tabulated
all the principal analyses at the end of the report; the soil analyses being
arranged according to the geological formations.
  You will observe that there is now reported one hundred and seventy-
three new analyses of soils, sub-soils, under-clays, and marls, and that of
these seven were of soils principally from the northwestern States, made
for the purpose of comparing the soils of Kentucky with the primeval
soil of that great region; and that our good lands do not suffer in the
comparison.
   There have now been analyzed, in this laboratory, as many as three
hundred and seventy-five soils, sub-soils, &c., &c., principally from this
State; and the results, published in the several volumes of our Reports,
form a greater body of statistics, as to the chemical composition of soils,
than is to be found in any part of the world.
   In the course of these soil analyses, a comparison was made in seventy-
nine cases of the analysis of the virgin, or uncultivated soil, with that of
some from a neighboring field which had been cultivated for a greater or
less term of years; and in seventy-one cases out of the seventy-nine it
was demonstrable, by the chemical analyses, that the soil of the "old
field" had lost more or less of its essential ingredients, which had proba-
bly been mainly removed from it in the crops produced. In eight cases
only, out of the seventy-nine, did the soil of the "old field" appear
richer than the neighboring uncultivated soil; and in several of these
cases a rich sub-soil had probably been mixed with the surface soil by
the operations of the plow. So that it is evident that careful chemi-
cal analysis may not only show the relative proportions of the grosser
materials of the soil-as the sand, clay, oxide of iron, carbonate of lime,
4c.-to which it has hitherto been mainly restricted, bult is also competent,
with the use of proper precautions, to exhibit the relative proportions of
the more essential elements conducive to vegetable nourishment-the phos-
phoric and sulphuric acid, the potash and soda, 4ic.-which exist in it
only in small, and frequently minute, quantities; so as to enable us to
detect the influence of the culture of the 8oil in producing its gradual,
but certain, deterioration.
   A gratifying result is exhibited in these soil analyses, also, in the fact
 that a large proportion of our Kentucky lands are naturally as rich a



42

 

TN'TRODUCWRY LETMER.



any on the continent, and that much of what is commonly denominated
poor or thin land, and is consequently very cheap and neglected at pres-
ent, if properly cultivated, in the light of modern scientific agriculture,
and by the energetic use of the necessary capital and labor, might be
made as productive as much of the arable lands of Europe, or of the
more thickly settled portions of our own country. Large bodies of land,
as well as immense deposits of mineral riches, now held much below their
value and unappreciated in our State, require only the assistance of judi-
cious public improvements to make them highly productive and profitable.
  Amongst the limestones analyzed will be found a considerable number
from various geological formations which would very probably make good
hydraulic cement, as their composition is similar to that of known good
hydraulic limestones. This kind of limestone is very valuable, and will
come more and more into use as the country advances in population.
Amongst them wilt be found, under the head of Jefferson county, a lime-
stone from Indiana, which was used in the construction of the court-
house in Louisville, which was found, on examination, to be a good
water-lime, and which experience had demonstrated to be unsuited for
use as a building-stone, because of its porous and absorbent nature, and
its great tendency to scale off under the influence of the atmospheric
agents. On the other hand, the magnesiaus linestones, which exist in
abundance about Louisville, as well as in various other parts of the State,
are amongst the most workable and durable of building stones. In these
respects some of the magnesian limestones of the Upper Silurian forma-
tion closely resemble that remarkable magnesian limestone which is found
amongst the very lowest beds of the Lower Silurian rocks-under the
Kentucky and bird's-eye marble-which was used at Lexington in the
construction of the Clay monument, and which resembles in composition
the Dolomitic marble of the north.
   The limonite iron ores analyzed are almost uniformly rich and valuable.
A large proportion of them were from the furnaces in Crittenden, Liv-
ingston, Lyon, and Trigg counties, collected by Mr. John Bartlett; others
mainly from the counties in the northeastern coal field. The examina-
tion of these ores, as well as of the carbonate of iron ores, the samples of
pig iron, and iron furnace slag, will no doubt be of considerable assist-
ance to the iron manufacture. It would appear from the analysis of the
slag, or Idinder," from the various iron furnaces, that in those of the



43

 

INTRODUCTORY LETTER.



southern portion of the State generally, it is the practice to use a smaller
relative quantity of limestone in the flux than is employed in the Greenup,
Carter, and other furnaces, on the northeastern coal field. It is believed
that the tendency of the larger proportion of lime in the flux, within
proper limits, is to remove more of those injurious elements, sulphur and
phosphorus, from the iron. This is true especially of the former element,
sulphur; but some doubt exists as to whether lime alone will carry off
the plosp/(wric acid which may be present in the furnace charge, and pre-
vent its reduction to phosphorus, which, by uniting with the iron, as is
well known, injures its tenacity, by making it "cold-short."
   A highly interesting faet, demonstrated in the analyses of the iron-
furnace slags is, that phosphorus, in the form of phosphoric acid, is some-
times carried off in considerable quantity in the "cinder."  From the
known strong affinity which exists between phosphoric acid and alumina,
it is probable tiht this acid exists in the " cinder " in combination with
that earth, and that hence the presence of aluminous materials, in the
furnace c/sarge, is faroratle to the production of tough iron from ores
cmnainiing phosphoric acid. It is therefore recommended, in smelting
many of the limonite ores of the southwestern furnaces-which are
found to contain very little alumina, and sometimes a considerable pro-
portion of phosphoric acid-not only to add enough limestone to make
the cinder a " bi-silicate," like the cinder of the Greenup furnaces, but
also to add to the charge some aluminous materials, such as clay, shale,
or other argillaceous substances free from phosphoric acid; to carry off
as much as possible of this injurious ingredient. In this manner, it is
confidently believed, the toughness of the iron will be increased.
   Amongst the coals analyzed were two specimens from Carter county
of cannel coal, both from the same region, which exceed even the Breck-
inridge coal in the production of oil, as they also contain less sulphur and
earthy matters than that. The manufacture of oils, paraffine, &c., from
cannel coal, has, since this survey commenced, taken a wonderful expan-
sion in this country, and is destined still more to increase as experience in
the preparation and use of these valuable products of our cannel coal is
acquired. There can be no doubt, from the abundance of good cannel
coal in our coal fields, and the large quantity of the oil obtained, that
cheap production will cause very extensive consumption; and, when the
heavier oils obtained in this manucture, have found their appropriate



44

 

                        TNTRODUCTORY   LETR.                        4 5

application, a large amount of capital and labor will be profitably used
in these new species of industry.
  Great drawbacks at present on this manufacture are, the great expense
incurred in machinery, &c., in experiments to find the best processes,
and the difficulty of obtaining a good market for the heavier oils. The
first will cure itself in the end; and it may be that ingenious persons
will either find extensive uses for the heavy oil, or that by a new
process (of graduated destructive distillation, for example,) it may be
converted into oil suitable for burning in lamps; which is the most
extensive application of the more volatile and fluid coal oils.
  The thirty analyses of the ashes of tobacco, fiom various parts of the
State, as well as from Cuba and Florida, were undertaken with a view to
ascertain the relationships of this plant to the soil on which it is
grown, as well as the influence of the soil on the character of the tobacco.
It is hoped that this investigation, which is more extensive than any
other published, so far as the writer is informed, may be serviceable to
an important branch of agriculture in our State. The same remarks
will apply to the examination of the mineral ingredients of wheat,
Indian corn, and the fermented juice of the grape. By the latter exam-
ination it is shown that vine culture, if judiciously carried on, need not
be as exhausting to the soil as the ordinary corn crop. This branch of
agriculture, which has extended greatly in our neighboring State, Ohio, is
well adapted to this region, and will find very appropriate soil and
location on much of our land which is now considered too poor or too
hilly for profitable culture in the ordinary farm crops.
   The twenty mineral waters examined are mostly from two of our
well-known watering places.
                                  Yours, respectfully,
                                                 ROBERT PETERS

 


GENERAL REMARKS ON AGRICLULTURE AND ON SOIL
                          ANALYSIS, &c.



  Although Kentucky can justly boast of the great mineral wealth con-
tained in the two extensive coal fields within her northeastern and south-
western boundaries, with their immense deposits of iron ores, &c., &c.,
which have already given a great impetus to the industry, the manufac-
tures, and commerce of our citizens; yet, when we observe the large
body of lands in the center of the State, some of which may be classed
amongst the richest on the surface of the globe, and reflect that almost
the whole area of the State is susceptible of cultivation, in the hands of
industrious and enlightened farmers, we cannot fail to be convinced that
agriculture is her largest interest and the cultivation of her lands her
greatest source of wealth.
  That this will continue to be the case as long as her lands yield abund-
ant products for the support of her inhabitants or for exportation, and
will cease to be true when they become worn out or unprofitable, so that
the harvest no longer repays the labor spent upon the soil, is a fact
obvious to the most casual observer; and that the soil may become thus
unprofitable in the course of time, has been demonstrated by lamentable
experience in the history of large bodies of land on the Atlantic shores
of some of the older States, which once enriched the early settlers of this
country by their luxuriant growths of tobacco, and large harvests of wheat
and corn, and which now, even after a long season of rest, are too poor
to repay the labor of the husbandman, and hopelessly sterile without the
application to them of imported manures; as it was still more early
exemplified in Europe and in Africa, where extensive regions, now worth-
less wastes, yielded in ancient times abundant harvests of grain for
exportation.
   This deterioration of the soil, by ordinary cultivation, is beginning to
be shown in the rich new lands of the west and northwest of our own
continent; on which, according to reliable statistics, the crops within the
last ten years have lamentably diminished on the best cultivated l1nd

 


OLENRAL RENRKS.4



as well as in all parts of our country, where proper care has not been
taken to keep up the fertility of the soil; the wheat and corn crops,
particularly, being found to be much less on the same extent of ground
than formerly. According to J. H. Klippart, Corresponding Secretary
of the Ohio State Board of Agriculture, in the preface to his elaborate
work, "The Wheat Plant," "Wheat, the staple crop of Ohio"--where
scarcely any effort is made to return to the soil the essential elements
which are removed from it in the crops-" has been annually diminishing
in its yield per acre, and in less than fifty years the average product has
been reduced from thirty to less than fifteen bushels per acre, whilst in
Great Britain"-by the use of guano, bone dust, super-phosphates, lime,
marl, and a more thorough culture-" the yield has increased from six-
teen to thirty-six bushels per acre during the same period." According
to Jay, in his "Statistical View of American Agriculture," "in Indiana,
the river bottoms, which used to produce an average of sixty bushels of
corn to the acre, now yield only forty bushels." Numerous other facts
of the kind could be quoted; and we may add, that all who have taken
the trouble to collect the statistics on this subject from all parts of the
United States, have come to the same conclusion, viz: that under the
ordinary system of agriculture in this country, our lands are becoming
less fertile, and consequently less profitable to the farmer and to the
community than formerly; and thus every year the territory of the nation,
on which it depends for food and clothing, undergoes a diminution in
value, which, taken in the aggregate, appears immense; rendering labor
less productive, and driving population farther and farther west towards
the Rocky Mountains.      In the same course of events, these new     lands,
not really richer than were most of those of the older settled regions in
their virgin state, will be reduced to the same unprofitable condition, and
then by force at last will the husbandman be obliged to study the philos-
ophy of his profession, and to learn the true principles of agriculture,
   This statement of Mr. Klippart is denied in the strongest terns in a review of this work in
the Ohio Cultivator, Columbus, Ohio, October 15th, 1859, page 313, in which it is called
a falsehood put forth within the last four years by patent medicine men," &c.; and in an article
in the same periodical, November 1st, 1855, headed Prof. Mopes and the Wheat Crop of Ohio, in
which this statement is called "a favorite scandal of Prof. Mapes," it is asserted-Ist. That the
average wheat crop of Ohio was neser thirty bushels per sore; and 2d. That the averge per acre
of wheat in Ohio amongst the majority of good farmers was never better than at that present
time. It is evident that the data quoted by the reviewer are imperfect for either side of the
question, and that this statement of Prof. Mapes and Mr. Klippart may not be sefficientlv well
grounded. But yet the general fact of the gradual deterioration of the soil by thriftless culture
and the consequent diminution of its crops, is unfortunately too widely demonstrated in this
country as well as on the older continents.



47

 


GENERAL REMARKS.



viz: bow to cultivate the soil and enjoy its products without impoverish-
jna it.
   That our own soil, in Kentucky, is undergoing this gradual process of
deterioration, is fully shown by the comparative analyses detailed in the
following pages.
   An evil so great as the serious decrease of the profits of labor applied
to agriculture, which has so much diminished the intrinsic value of land-
ed property, in many places in the older countries as well as in our own,
demands the serious attention of governments and of the people; to
discover the cause, and to apply the remedy.
   Long experience in agriculture has taught the importance of deep
and thorough plowing, of draining, of the proper selection of seeds, and
of timely, careful, and clean cultivation, as well as the adaptedness of
particular crops to region, locality, soil, and season. It has taught us
the advantages of faillow, of rotation of crops, of the uses of green
crops, either by plowing in, or by feeding animals and the making of
barn-yard manure, for the restoration of tired or worn down fields.
Many of the valuable precepts of modern husbandry, verified by long
experience as the best for the production of good crops, were indeed
known to and followed by the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans;
but the constant deterioration of the soil, in all those regions where the
crops were permanently removed from the land, to be consumed in a
different locality, whether that crop consisted of grain or other vegetable
products, or of animals, showed that a perfect system of agriculture has
not yet been attained; and that a closer study of the soil and its pro-
ducts than was possible to the ancients is necessary.
  The ancient theory, that, with good cultivation, the land is inexhausti-
ble, which has brought these disastrous results, is yet maintained, even
by some of the leading agricultural authors of Europe, and is practically
indorsed by most of the farmers of the world, and especially of this
country. In our rich virgin soil, ordinary care in sowing, cultivation,
and harvesting, only is necessary to secure good crops, and the partial
exhaustion of the soil is scarcely appreciated in the first generation.
The farmers, who come after these first, find it advantageous to plow
deeper, and to study the rotation of crops and the renovating influence
of clover; their successors may be obliged to resort to barn-yard
manure, to sub-soil plowing, or may even think it more profitable to



48

 

GENERAL REMARKS.



seek new lands, rather than to endeavor to renovate the old; whilst the
experience of older countries have shown that all the manure which can
be made on the much exhausted lands which have been cultivated through
a long succession of years, is not sufficient, in many cases, to make them
produce profitable crops, with all the labor and skill ii hich may be
applied to them, and it becomes evident some extraneous fertilizer
must be applied to the worn out soil to enable it again to bear remuner-
ative crops.
   In England, and other countries in Europe, as well as in some parts
of this country, that something extra was found in plaster of paris, in
lime, in marls, in guano, in bone-dust or super-phosphates, in phosphatic
mineral substances, in various salts of potash and ammonia, or in the
contents of the cess-poals and the water closets; and it has been mainly
by such means, aided by improved machinery and management, that the
products of the fields and the profits of agriculture, in England particu-
larly, have been wonderfully increased, so that the grain crops have been
more than doubled on the s-ime space of ground, within the last fifty
years.
   A difference of opinion has existed, and much debate arisen, as to the
really essen/ial ma/erials which are taken from the soil in the cultivated
crops, and which must be returned to It to restore its fertility. Some;
maintaining the opinion. which was held formerly by Dumas and Bous-
singault, of France, and still upheld by many agricultural writers of
England; contend that the relative proportion of nitrogen, or of ammo-
nia, in a manure, determines its value as a fertilizer, and that the
atmospheric elements of vegetables are the only really important ones.
Others consider what they denominate 1 /bnen7sS I to be the true food of
plants; whilst others, with Sprengel and Liebig, contend, with a some-
what better logic, that the fixed or mineral ingredients of crops and
manures, such as are found in their ashes when burnt; as the phosphates,
lime, the alkalies, &c., are the most important for the consideration of the
farmer, because, whilst every different element of the vegetable composi-
tion is equally essential to the growth of plants, those which are of a
fixed nature, and only to be found in the soil, were to be more carefully
husbanded and preserved from waste and loss than those elements which
are everywhere abundant in the atmosphere.
  It is a question of vital importance to agriculture, and, consequently,
             7

 


AndAL REMARKS.



to mankind at large, on which depends the largest and nearest interests
of our race, and, as may be understood on reflection, one which can bo
decided only by the aid of modern science-only by ascertaining the
minute composition of the soil, and of the atmospheric agents and water
which penetrate and moisten it; of the vegetable and animal bodies
produced on it, and of the elementary nature of the food and excretions
of plants and animals.
  Men of science have, with great activity, thrown themselves into this
new field of useful research, and within the last twenty-five years this very
important question may be said to te in reality settled. Twenty-five
years ago some of the ablest chemists of the world had failed to detect
that important ingredient, potash, in soils, and the existence of phos-
phoric acid in them, or in the rocks whence they were derived, was almost
matter of speculation alone; but now careful and minute analyses have
been made of many soils in various parts of the world, and the mineral
elements of plants of many kinds, and the remarkably constant nature
of their ashes, as well as the elementary composition of manures, have
been ascertained. Numerous experiments have been made on the growth
of plants in pure sand, pure silex, and pure charcoal, &c., with or without
the addition of the various materials believed to be essential to their
growth-as well as extensive observations in the garden and field with
various salts and fertilizing agents-and a body of information has now
been obtained which, whilst there yet may be, amongst the imperfectly
informed or prejudiced, some warm advocates of the exclusive humus,
nitrogen, or mineral theories, has caused the real men of science through-
out the world, whatever their supposed partisans may think, to be very
much of one opinion upon the subject.
   The rational theory, which appears to be based on truth, now generally
 maintained by men of science throughout the world, is the result of
 numerous observations and experiments mostly made within the present
 century, and may be summed up in few words:
   All plants and animals are ultimately composed of comparatively few
 elements; of these, some, such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen,
 which make up the greater portion of their weight, are derived by vege-
 tables from the atmospheric air and the water which penetrate their
 tissues, and obtained by animals, directly or indirectly, from vegetable
 food. The remaining elements, equally e&nential to organic existence but

 


GENERAL REMARK.



round in vegetable and animal bodies in much smaller proportions than
the atmospheric elements above detailed, are derived, mediately or imme-
diately, from the soil, and have been called, by distinction, their fired or
mineral elements; these are potassium, sodium, calciurn, magnesiuma, iron,
manganese, phosphorus, sulphuer, chlorine, silicon, 4fC., mostly existing in
the soil and in organic bodies in the state of the oxides, potash, soda
lime, magnesia, oxides of iron and manganese, siter, or as chlorides of
potassium and sodium, 4c. - The phosphorus and sulphur, usually found
in the soil and absorbed in the form of salts of their acids (phosphoric
acid and sulphuric acid), viz: as phosphates and sulphates, exist, also, in
some few organic compounds, uncombined with oxygen.
   All these elements, whether from the atmosphere or from the soil, are
equally necessary to the fbrmation of organic tissues, animal or vegeta-
ble, and the absence of any one of them would be fatal to the growth
and development of these living beings; consequently, it would appear
to be waste of time to theorize as to the relative importance of any of
them. But in practical agriculture the case is somewhat different, and
the one set of elements-the fired or so-called mineral elements-become
most worthy of consideration and care, because of the greater danger of
their alienation and loss, and the greater difficulty experienced in their
restoration.
   All living plants can, by the aid of solar light, decompose the water
and carbonic acid always present in the atmosphere and penetrating the
soil; and it is thus they obtain the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen neces-
sary to form their tissues; and reliable experiments show, in the air and
in the soil, even the most sterile, enough nitrogen, in combination either
with hydrogen as ammonia, or with oxygen as nitric acid, to supply the
most greedy need of this element by vegetables. Indeed it has been
proved that many plants, such as the clover, can even work up the
gaseous nitrogen existing in such large proportion in the atmosphere, if
indeed all vegetables do not exert this power.  The supply of these
atmospheric elements, then, is constant and inexhaustible. For who
these organic bodies decay, or are destroyed by any process, these elements
are again restored to the atmosphere, the carbon and the oxygen forming
carbonic acid again, and the hydrogen and nitrogen producing water and
ammonia, or nitric acid, with the aid of the abundant oxygen of the air,
and these compounds, as gases and vapors, ceaselessly penetrate the



11

 


5OMERAL RE3IARK



atmosphere, according to known physical laws, causing its composition
to be uniformly preserved, and insuring to vegetable life, on every inch
of the surface of the globe, a constant and abundant supply of these
important elements.
  But the potash, soda, phosphorus, surlphurr, lime, ragnesia, &c., &c.,
exist only in a fixed condition in the soil, and in the rocks from whence
it is derived, and, especially the four first mentioned, in only limited and
comparatively minute quantities; and they are not certainly re-supplied
by any general natural process, when they have once been removed from
it; but when they have been taken up, as they continually are, into the
tissues of plants, and secondarily, into the composition of the bodies
of animals, they are usually, in the common course of the consumption
of agricultural products, entirely alienated from the soil and in great
measure lost to it forever; and this is, in reality, the great cause of the
gradual deterioration of the arable land observable all over the globe
where agriculture is carried on according to the ancient methods.
  As long as men congregate in towns and cities, and consume, within
the limits of a small space. for food for themselves and their domestic
animals, for clothing and for fuel and construction, the products of a large
extent of country, without returning to the land which supplies them any
of the phosphates, the alhalies, or other essential materials of the soil;
which, on the contrary, are constantly lost in the cesspool and the sewer,
or allowed to find their way into the streams, and finally into the sea; so
long will the country be gradually impoverished, whatever care may be
taken to retard the process by various modes of culture, unless these
elements thus withdrawn from the soil be restored to it from some other
source. Science has long since demonstrated that no element, nor the
millionth part of a grain of matter of any kind, can be destroyed by
any known power of nature or of art, whilst it is equally impossible
to originate it or to change its nature. The various products of the soil
consumed as food are not really destroyed; their atmospheric elements
escape mainly from the bodies of the persons and animals who consume
them, as gaseous and vaporous emanations, from the lungs and the skin;
whilst the fixed or mineral elements pass out of the body in the liquid
and solid excretions. That quantity of these fixed materials which enter
into the composition of the body at death, is left in the soil which hides
its decomposition, which gradually returns the atmospheric elaentB to



3:12

 




their source; whilst even that portion of the products of the soil which
is used as fuel, undergoes the same process, but more quickly, giving its
volatile portion to the air in the ascending gases and vapors of the smoke,
and leaving the fixed elements in its ashes.
  As cities will continue to exist and increase, and consume the products
of the country, a true system of agriculture, the first principle of which
is to maintain the productiveness of the soil, would either provide for the
final restoration to the land of all those valuable fixed ingredients which
thus accumulate in and around them, or ate carried off in the streams
into which they are drained, or give it an equivalent quantity of them
from some other source.
  In China, we are credibly informed, the densely populated land has
its fertility perfectly maintained mainly by the former plan alone; and
in Be'gium, and to some extent in France, the small farms, which are
only large enough to support the families which cultivate them, and on
which, whilst everything raised is consumed on the place and nothing, or
almost nothing, is exported, the careful preservation and application to
the soil of all kinds of manures made on it, keeps it constantly in