The Project Gutenberg EBook of Soil Culture, by J. H. Walden

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Title: Soil Culture

Author: J. H. Walden

Release Date: January 15, 2010 [EBook #30975]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOIL CULTURE ***

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[Illustration: Author]

SOIL CULTURE;

CONTAINING

A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW

OF

AGRICULTURE, HORTICULTURE, POMOLOGY,
DOMESTIC ANIMALS, RURAL ECONOMY,
AND AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE.

BY

J. H. WALDEN, A. M.

ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS

NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY ROBERT SEARS,
181 WILLIAM STREET.
1858.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857,
BY J. H. WALDEN,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in
and for the Northern District of Illinois.

SAVAGE & McCREA, STEREOTYPERS, C. A. ALVORD, PRINTER,
13 Chambers Street, N.Y. No. 15 Vandewater Street, N.Y.

* * * * *

TO

THE PRACTICAL CULTIVATORS OF THE SOIL,

The True Lords of the Manor,

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,

BY THEIR SINCERE FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.

* * * * *

PREFATORY NOTE TO THE READER.

If "he who causes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before,
is a benefactor of his race," he is not less so who imparts to millions
a knowledge of the methods by which it is done.

The last half century has been the era of experiments and writing on the
cultivation of the soil. The result has been the acquisition of more
knowledge on the subjects embraced, than the world had attained in all
its previous history. That knowledge is scattered through many volumes
of numerous periodicals and books, and interspersed with many theories,
and much speculation, that can never be valuable in practice. In the
form in which it is presented, it confuses, rather than aids, the great
mass of cultivators. Hence the prejudice agai