In some fields, or parts of fields, the land is wet and the plants cannot take up the food, even while an abundance of it is within reach. The remedy in this case is under-draining. On other fields, the plant-food is locked up in insoluble combinations. In this case we must plow up the soil, pulverize it, and expose it to the oxygen of the atmosphere. We must treat the soil as my mother used to tell me to treat my coffee, when I complained that it was not sweet enough. “I put plenty of sugar in,” she said, “and if you will stir it up, the coffee will be sweeter.” The sugar lay undissolved at the bottom of the cup; and so it is with many of our soils. There is plenty of plant-food in them, but it needs stirring up. They contain, it may be, 3,000 lbs. of nitrogen, and other plant-food in still greater proportion, and we are only getting a crop that contains 18 lbs. of nitrogen a year, and of this probably the rain supplies 9 lbs. Let us stir up the soil and see if we cannot set 100 lbs. of this 3,000 lbs. of nitrogen free, and get three tons of hay per acre instead of half a ton. There are men who own a large amount of valuable property in vacant city lots, who do not get enough from them to pay their taxes. If they would sell half of them, and put buildings on the other half, they might soon have a handsome income. And so it is with many farmers. They have the elements of 100 tons of hay lying dormant in every acre of their land, while they are content to receive half a ton a year. They have property enough, but it is unproductive, while they pay high taxes for the privilege of holding it, and high wages for the pleasure of boarding two or three hired men. We have, say, 3,000 lbs. of nitrogen locked up in each acre of our soil, and we get 8 or 10 lbs. every year in rain and dew, and yet, practically, all that we want, to make our farms highly productive, is 100 lbs. of nitrogen per acre per annum. And furthermore, it should be remembered, that to keep our farms rich, after we have once got them rich, it is not necessary to develope this amount of nitrogen from the soil every year. In the case of clover-hay, the entire loss of nitrogen in the animal and in the milk would not exceed 15 per cent, so that, when we feed out 100 lbs. of nitrogen, we have 85 lbs. left in the manure. We want to develope 100 lbs. of nitrogen in the soil, to enable us to raise a good crop to start with, and when this is once done, an annual development of 15 lbs. per acre in addition to the manure, would keep up the productiveness of the soil. Is it not worth while, therefore, to make an earnest effort to get started?--to get 100 lbs. of nitrogen in the most available condition in the soil?