bones.  Nature cannot substitute iron or any other mineral in the animal system, out of which to form hard strong bones; nor can any other mineral in the soil perform the peculiar function assigned to silica in the vital economy of cereal plants.  To protect the living germs in the seeds of wheat, corn, oats, rye, barley, &c, the cuticle or bran of these seeds contains considerable flint.  The same is true of chaff.

The question naturally arises,—­How is the farmer to increase the quantity of soluble silica or flint in his soil?  This is a question of the highest practical importance.  There are three principal ways in which the object named may be attained.  First, by keeping fewer acres under the plough.  Land in pasture, if well managed, will gain its fertility, and in the process accumulate soluble silica in the surface soil.  In this way more wheat and surer crops may be made by cultivating a field in wheat two years than four or six.  If the field in the mean time be devoted to wool-growing, butter or cheese-making, or to stock-raising, particular care must be taken to make great crops of grass or clover to grow on the land, and have all the manure, both solid and liquid, applied to its surface.

There are many counties in England that yield an average of thirty-two bushels of wheat per acre for ten crops in succession.  There are but few of the old counties in the United States which average the half of that quantity:  and yet America has greater agricultural capabilities than that of Great Britain.

Another way to increase soluble silica in the soil, is to grow such crops, in rotation with wheat culture, as will best prevent the loss of dissolved flint, at any time by leaching and washing, through the agency of rain water.  This remark is intended to apply more particularly to those large districts devoted to cotton and tobacco culture, plants that take up no considerable amount of silica, and which by the constant stirring of the earth, and the clean tillage which they demand, favor the leaching of the soil.  To keep too much of a plantation of these crops, is to lessen its capabilities for producing good crops of corn, wheat, and barley, at a small expense.  Corn plants, well managed, will extract more pounds of silica in three or six months from the soil, than any other.  As not an ounce of this mineral is needed in the animal economy of man or beast, it can all be composted in cornstalks, blades, and cobs, or in the dung and urine derived from corn, and be finally reorganized in the stems of wheat plants.  Corn culture and wheat culture, if skilfully and scientifically conducted, go admirably together.  Of the two, more bread, more meat, and more money can be made from the corn than from the wheat plant in this country.  But so soon as what is called “high farming” in England, shall be popular in the United States, the crops both of wheat and corn grown here will demonstrate