The American Reformed Cattle Doctor: Containing the necessary information for preserving the health and curing the diseases of oxen, cows, sheep, and swine, with a great variety of original recipes, and valuable information in reference to farm and dairy management — John Shaqi
The American Reformed Cattle Doctor: Containing the necessary information for preserving the health and curing the diseases of oxen, cows, sheep, and swine, with a great variety of original recipes, and valuable information in reference to farm and dairy managementDadd, George H.
Science
The American Reformed Cattle Doctor: Containing the necessary information for preserving the health and curing the diseases of oxen, cows, sheep, and swine, with a great variety of original recipes, and valuable information in reference to farm and dairy management
Dadd, George H.
Veterinary medicine
The alternation of crops seems destined to effect a great change in
agriculture. A French chemist informs us that the roots of plants imbibe
matter of every kind from the soil, and thus necessarily abstract a
number of substances, which are not adapted to the purposes of
nutrition, and that they are ultimately expelled by the excretory
vessels, and return to the soil as excrement. The excrementitious
portion of the food also returns to the soil. Now, as excrement cannot
be assimilated by the same animal or plant that ejected it, without
danger to the organs of digestion or eliminations, it follows that the
more vegetable excrement the soil contains, the more unfitted must it be
for plants of the same species; yet these excrementitious matters may,
however, still be capable of assimilation by another kind of plant,
which would absorb them from the soil, and render it again fertile for
the first. In connection with this, it has been observed that several
plants will flourish when growing beside each other; but it is not good
policy to sow two kinds of seed together: on the other hand, some plants
mutually prevent each other's development. The same happens if young
cattle are suffered to graze and sleep in the barn together; the one
lives at the expense of the other, which soon shows evidences of
disease. The injurious effects of permitting young children to sleep
with aged relatives are known to many of our readers; yet some parents
see their children sicken and die without knowing the why or wherefore.
From such facts as these,--which we might multiply to an indefinite
extent, were it necessary,--we learn that nature's laws are immutable
and uncompromising; and woe be to the man that transgresses them: they
are a part of the divine law, which cannot be set at nought with
impunity.
Ignorance on these important subjects has existed too long: yet we
perceive in the distant horizon a ray of intellectual light, streaming
through our schools and agricultural societies. The result will be, that
succeeding generations will be better acquainted with nature's laws,
from which shall flow untold blessings. Chemistry teaches us that
animals and vegetables are composed of a vast number of different
compounds, which are nearly all produced by the same elementary
principles. Vegetables consist of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; and the
same substances, with the addition of nitrogen, are the principal
constituents of the animal economy. In a word, all the constituents of
animal creation have actually been discovered in vegetables: this has,
we presume, led to the conclusion that "all flesh is grass."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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