When you built your house you did not employ a man who
had only a vague idea of how it was to be constructed, and what it was to
be built of. Before your house was finished you had used lumber as your
chief material, but you also employed brick, stone, lime, sand, nails,
etc. If we examine a house, we find all these materials. If we wish to
build another house, we know we must use them in their proper proportions.
Now it is just as much a matter of fact, and is just as capable of proof,
that a plant of any kind is built up on a regular plan, and from
well-defined materials, as that a house is so built. The materials in
various houses differ just as the elements in different kinds of plants
vary. A man can decide what he will build of; Nature has decided forever
what she will build of. She will construct a stalk of corn or wheat with
its grain out of essentially the same materials to the end of time. Now
suppose one or more of these necessary ingredients is limited in the soil,
or has been taken from it by a succession of crops, what rational hope can
we have for a good crop unless we place the absent material in the ground,
and also put it there in a form suitable for the use of the plant?"
"What you say sounds plausible enough," answered the squire, scratching
his head with the worried, perplexed air of a man convinced against his
will. "How was it, then, that Walters made such a mess of it? He had his
soil analyzed by a land doctor, and boasted that he was going to put into
it just what was lacking.
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