Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1877 — Robbing the Soil. [ARTICLE]

Robbing the Soil.

Few farmers consider that each crop that is grown and removed from the soil has taken away so much strength and virtue from it; that in the stalk and kernel is found the concentrated richness that was in the ground until transformed by the mysterious ways of Nature in its transformation. Nature asks no aid from the husbandman, neither will it quietly brook being plundered, but, instead, following each demand made upon it in a way of a crop, it is found reduced and worn, and will not again attain to its former merit until there is restored to it equally and in proportion what has been taken from it. Rotation in crops is demonstrated as being not only best, but demanded; the continual growing and gathering from the same field a harvest of the same or kindred product will in due time deprive the soil m the field of the ability to produce that especial article, as it has taken from the soil all that is necessary for the successful production of that crop, and either fertilizers must be supplied, or the field will become wholly worthless, save for some other and entirely different kind of product. When crops fail *of themselves, the failure, as a rule, can be traced to the neglect of men, and not the defect of Nature, or mistake of the Creator. The soil is provided in a general state of richness; if continual demands are made upon it to produce, and no return offered in way of remedies for its degenerating tendency, the outcome will be a thin crop from an exhausted soil. The principal products of the farm are of that class that are employed in feeding the great family of consumers, and consequently it is removed in bulk from the soil, and but a minimum portion of it remains to enrich the ground for another season; the stalks and straws are lost to it, and another robbery committed. Taking from the soil these vital principles and making no return from them is reducing each year the value of the farm per acre in dollars and cents. This heed not be, as the product from the soil taken and transferred intoother conditions, such as composite and manure, if returned to the fields, will restore to the soil its strength, and keep it ever in condition to respond to the demands made by succeeding crops.— Factory and Farm —A man in Cheyenne, a few aays ago, went into a store to buy a barrel of apples. He bit into an apple, concluded to take a barrel of twenty-ounce pippins, went away, and, after being absent an hour or ao, came back and asked to see the apple he had bitten into. On being asked why he wanted that particular one, he said that he had lost his false teeth somewhere, and he rather thought he had left them stick ing in that apple. His surmise turned out to be true. - : i _