AN ECONOMIC POINT.

BY C. C. LORD, HOPKINTON.

As

In previous articles we have dwelt somewhat upon the economic importance of considering the obstacles to agricultural prosperity in New Hampshire. We now offer brief attention to a scientific inducement to the cultivation of such prosperity. in the former case, so in this, we intend to follow the line of natural science. Hinderances and helps should both be contemplated with reference to the corporate law of nature, for enterprise must always pursue nature's path to be successful.

In the first aspect of the case, the majority of people in our State are obliged to work for a living. In its agricultural aspect, this living accrues from the soil. But there is a better prospect than is implied in the original statement. Scientifically speaking, a farmer works for only five per cent of his living; in other words, ninety-five per cent of his living is the spontaneous gift of nature. Let us explain what we mean.

Professor Stockbridge says that ninety-five per cent of our crops comes from the air, and five per cent from the soil. The plant-feeding organs are the roots and leaves. The leaves gather food only in the form of gas; thus its starch, sugar, oils, and gums are gathered. The real feeding-roots are the fine, hair-like threads that penetrate all through the soil. They do not feed on the soil, but absorb their food in the state of solution in water; thus they obtain their potash, silica, lime, magnesia, phosphorous, sulphuric acid, alumina, and lime. We presume that no informed person will deny the essential truth of this statement.

But it has a further illustrative application. We have in previous articles observed that the climate of New Hampshire is comparatively a cold one. The elements of plant food supplied directly by the air are the ones that specially endow the animal system with dynamic heat. Thus we see nature has admirably anticipated the needs of man in this instance. In New Hampshire, man needs much heat which nature, so to speak, gives him for nothing.

The supply of potential heat, so abundantly provided for man by nature, is remarkable in being practically exhaustless. Wherever there is life, there is heat in store. The leaves of plants appropriate gas. This gas is principally carbonic acid gas. It is a product of the breath of animal life, of every form of combustion, and of decay. It floats everywhere that organic decomposition occurs to free the carbonic elements of natural forms. In this source of supply there is but a little liability to loss. Indeed, it is affirmed that carbon need never be applied, as a source of plant food, to the soil.

The attention which agriculture needs to give to loss is applicable to those five other parts in one hundred that crops take from the soil. In growing, crops exhaust the soil; in selling crops, the farmer reduces the five per cent of the essential elements of a living; hence it follows that unless he makes a return of soluble elements of fertile soil, ruin must result in the end. Let us look at his sources of replacement.

A portion of the fertilizing elements of the soil is relatively spontaneous; in other words, a part of the loss resulting from the farmer's operations is resupplied without labor. Floating in the air, derived from various forms of decomposition, are other than carbonaceous elements of plant growth, and which may be washed out of the air and into the soil by rains. M. Borral estimated that, by the aid of rain, there fell annually upon an acre of English land 451⁄2 pounds of nitrogen, 103 of nitric acid, 191⁄2 of ammonia, 121⁄2 of chlorine, 35 of lime, and 11 of magnesia, making 2261⁄2 pounds in all.

Much of the aggregate of loss occurring by agricultural production and enterprise is resupplied from direct experimental

sources.

Domestic and culinary waste and animal excreta fur

nish an amount of fertilizing supplies that, with all our knowledge, is yet very much overlooked. The sink-drain, the vault, the yard, and the hovel yield potential supplies that are incredible to any but one who has given thorough attention to them. Let us look at one item. A few years ago, Hon. Z. A. Gilbert, of Maine, made a startling announcement that a cow will annually void 20,000 pounds of solids and an equal amount of liquids. We presume a good cow, well fed, is meant. The statement seems doubtful at first, but let a man determine for himself how much in pounds a well-fed, good cow will void in a day, and then multiply the amount by 365, and see if the result is not surprising. It is needless to deny that that much of the fertilizing resource of the direct operations of farming is lost. It can be better saved by better receptacles, better composting, and especially by better inclosures for stock. It is time to ask the serious question, if it is not better to soil the stock, saving the solid and liquid excreta for fertilizing purposes, than to allow so much ranging in pastures, incurring loss in various ways, as will appear to a thoughtful, investigating mind. In time, farmers of intelligence will be compelled to consider that, in pasture, stock treads up food, wastes manure, and browses the forest, at the same time with less profit in direct product than can be secured by proper inclosures, regular feeding and watering, and sufficient air and exercise.

However, in the practice of the strictest and wisest economy, the farmer who sells must buy. Selling the native elements of the soil in crops and produce, he must buy them back in fertilizers. We now approach a very important proposition. If the farmer cannot sell more in value than he buys, he cannot prosper. What is the source of his possible prosperity in selling and buying? In the superiority of the products of art over those of nature. It may seem strange to some to mention agriculture as an art; but it must be an art if it is to be a success in the present contingency. If a farmer must pay $30 or $40 a ton for guanos and phosphates, he must produce something as a result that is worth more than $30 or $40. Taking something and making something of more value from it, is art, and nothing else. So long as a New Hampshire farmer can rely for fertilizing supplies upon natural ones of guano and

phosphate rock, manipulated slightly and at less cost, and can turn them into vegetables, fruits, corn, grain, beef, mutton, pork, etc., representing skilled labor and commanding a higher price, his prosperity is secure. That such a possibility is real, is shown by Hon. J. B. Walker, of Concord, in a pamphlet on "Indian Corn, asserting that fifty bushels of corn at seventy five cents a bushel, or $37.50 in the aggregate, is $26 more than the cost of the commercial fertilizers necessary to produce it, while there is also an infinitesimal profit on the fodder.

Our economic point involves three subordinate hints: First, nature has anticipated the needs of human life in a marked degree; second, man should aim to avail himself of the aids nature holds out to him; third, the products of industry should be of the best possible character, in order to more than counterbalance the value of partially spontaneous, necessary supplies. Agriculturally and locally viewed, New Hampshire farmers have a large income from nature; they should make the most of their immediate resources; their products should be of the best seed, the best blood, and the best management.

SOILING.*

BY HON. WARREN BROWN.

AMONG the many questions which have received attention by the agricultural press, and have been the subject for discussion at farmers' clubs and institutes, I have been much surprised that the subject of soiling cattle, which is feeding cattle at the barn during the summer season when they are usually fed in the pasture, upon green food taken there for the purpose, has not received more attention and is not oftener alluded to. subject worthy of our attention, and of great farmers of the New England States.

Certainly it is a importance to the

In 1819 the Hon. Josiah Quincy prepared an address upon the "Soiling of Cattle," which was delivered before the Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, and which has since been published in book form, and to-day is the only standard work upon the subject. He treated the subject in an exhaustive manner, proving conclusively the great advantages to be derived from the adoption of the system, and it showed him to have been very far in advance of his times as a practical and scientific agriculturist. He made the following claims as to the advantages of soiling: First, the saving of land; second, saving of fences; third, the economy of food; fourth, the better condition and comfort of the cattle; fifth, the greater production of milk; sixth, the attainment of manure. Each of these claims is supported by able and conclusive arguments from actual experiments upon his own farm and under his own practical direction,

*Read at a farmers' meeting held at New England Agricultural Hall, Boston, Mass., February 26, 1887.