THE MAORI MESSENGER. Auckland, January 29, 1852.

Maori Messenger : Te Karere Maori, Volume 4, Issue 81, 29 January 1852, Page 2

THE MAORI MESSENGER. Auckland, January 29, 1852.

THERE is no mistake more fatal to the prosperity of Colonial Agriculture than the ruinous process of exhaustion to which the most fertile soils arc so frequently subjected, by compelling crop after crop until the land becomes so impoverished that, in t'io long run, it will yield nothing but worthless weeds. In Van Diemen's Land, we have beheld the richest wheat-yielding districts converted to o. state of liopeles3 sterility by this monstrous practice. In the early days of that Colony, Pitt Water was accounted its granary;—its soil was of a seemingly inexhaustible fecundity; and wheat, wheat, wheat was wrung from its

bosom season after season, for from eighteen to twenty years, until every germ of fruitfulness became effectually extinguished. Where, at one time, the ground had been periodically covered with golden grain, at a later date it was choked with drake, dock, and darnell; until no means of restoring iis productiveness was left except by rest, paring and burning the weeds, manurhg, and an anxious and skilful implication of an improved system of agriculture. In all probabiltiy, the cause of this pre.isalure exhaustion of ft rich and virgin vilniay be traced to the heavy ■'outlay occasioned by clearing and hu'tiir.g ofl" the growing timber,—by the cost entailed for 'enclosures,—and by the natural anxiety to exact the largest and speediest return from lands thus cleared and enclosed. Whether this be so or not, it is certain that in all the Austrdiaii Colonies much of the finest soil lm« been thus imprudently detciiorated; and as we believe, our Maori cultivators arc only much too prone to imitate such ruinous example?, we cannot sufficiently caution them against them, or too frequently incite them to adopt the best and most complete system of husbandry, which they will eventually discover to be the most immediately profitable, and the most lastingly productive. We continue the treatise on American Agriculture, which we commenced in our last with a few facts about soils. ''Soi's contain, as a general thing, not more than one part in a thousand of the atoms, in an available condition which

nature consumes in forming a crop of any kind. Tliis statement expresses a fact of great practical important c; for the husbanding of these fertilizing atoms is the first step towards arresting (lie impoverishment of the earth. It is tl.'C mailer in the soil which makes crops in one arrangement of i;s atoms, and forms manure in another condition of the same atoms that the farmer should learn to preserve from waste and Ices. "Soils of different degrees of pro ditcliveness, where their mechanical, texture and physical properties are alike, nlways contain unlike quantities of the fooil of crops. It seems to make littfc difference how small is the aim unt of the lacking ingredient in the composition of cultivated plants. Its absence is fatal to the further growth of the crop after its appropriate aliment fails in the soil. It is easy to discover the wisdom of this universal law. Suppose nature should organize giass, grain, and other plants which serve as the daily food of all the higher order of animals, as we'd without bone-earth (phosphate of lime) as with that mineral—would it he possible for such grass and grain to jie.'d to the blood ol domestic animals, and o'f man himself, that solid oarthy matter which impart, strength to human bones, and to those of oxen, horses, sheep, and swine? Certainly not. Although iron is always present in the food and blood of animals, no farmer ever killed a calf, a pig, or an ox, which had iron for the frame of its system. No anatomist ever saw a bone in the body of a person formed of other earthy atoms than such as Providence had fitted for that peculiar fundi'n in the animal economy. '

"The brains nnJ muscles of all animals contain both sulphur and phosphorus, as constituent elements. If their daily food, ilerived as it is from the soil, lacked either .sulphur or phosphorus, must not this radical defect in their nourishment soon induce weakness and disease, and finally result in premature death? To prevent consequences so disastrous and so obvious, nature refuses to organize plants without the presence in the soil, in an mm liable form, of those peculiar atoms adapted alike to the wants of vegetable and animal vitality. Thiswise piovisicn should he carefully studied by every one who desires to enjoy sound health and a lornr and happy lift-. Most of'the ills that flesh is heir to.' as well at most maladies of p'nnts, hnve their origin in the vi lation of nature's laws. ' Tim griwth and tr-msfifnftonal vigour .of all living beings, not les* than the revolutions of the earth on its axis, are governed by immutable laws. One of these ! appears to be-th.it an atom of carbon (charjnal) shall not perform the function of an atom of iron ; nor can an atom of iron perform the office <f an atom of carbon, or ttiat <.f any other element concerned in the organism of plants mid animate. "There are only some fifteen kinds of elementary bodies by nature in forming every vegetable and animal sub stance, produ cd on the farm, in the orchard, or in the garden.

" Tlie science of rural economy consists in the systematic study of atoms, anil of the laws l>y which they arc governed, svlicther they exist in solid or crumbling rocks, in loose earths, in vegetable or animal mould, in rmcnling manure, in the living tissues and cells of organized bring', or in ilie form of invisible gasscs dilVnsed through the atmosphere. Every product »f agri u'tiiral labour is either a vegetable or an animal substance ; anil in its pioi'iiciion, not an atom of neiv matter is i ailed into existence ; nor is it possib'e to annihilate an atom when it decays. "In the language of science, all matter which is neither vcjje'able nor animal, inclmling air and water, is mineral. All minerals are cither so'i'ds, like sand, cloy, and Mmc; or liquids like water, or gases like common air. The farmer denls largely with atoms in cadi of these forms; a.id hence he should be familiar with (he several sciences which treat of 1 he natural phenomena witnessed in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. lie should know that plants alone subsist on mineral or disorganized food - that if there were no plan's in the ocean or on the land, ueillicr marine nor land animals could have a being. In the absence of all vegetation, it is obvious that all animals must be carnivorous, or rcas? to consume organized aliment, lleing wholly dependent on mutual destruction for the means of subsistence, every day would diminish the aggregate supply of food, and the last animal would soon die of starvati -u. "From the above reasoning, it is plain that vegetable life is older on this planet than animal life; and that p'ants may have nourished thousands of years b- fore the lowest type of being which depended wholly on organized lood for subsistem e wa3 created. It will also ha seen that the line of demarcation between animals and plants is well defined, by the fact that the latter can organize the elements of nil vegetable ami animal substances into compound bodies, which the former cannot do. All plants produce and increase organized matter; nil animals consume and diminish the quantity of organized : food. - '