Excerpt from The Pennsylvania Farm Journal, Vol. 2: Devoted to Horticulture, Agriculture, and Rural Economy As regards special manuring, a chief object is to supply the soil with one or more ingredients, of which it has been ascertained to be wholly or in part deficient. In this connection it is proper to call attention primarily to a great and very prevalent abuse, which is a source of very serious loss to most farmers. When a field begins to be unproductive, very few think of doing anything else than to supply it again with a full dressing of barnyard manure. It never occurs to them to inquire whether the diminished fertility may not result from causes which can be removed at little cost by the supply of some particular ingredients which the soil needs. Yet when such is the case, the application of mineral manure is downright extravagance and waste, because we thus supply probably only one or at most but a few of the deficient ingredients which could be furnished more cheaply by some other substance. A few examples will serve to elucidate this. When a black crumbling soil contains no silicic acid, or its humus has become carbonized, or sour, we may indeed supply the needed silicic acid by a dressing of barnyard manure, since it is contained in the straw which is used for litter. A portion of the carbonized humus, also, will be decomposed alike by the ammonia developed, and the more rapid decomposition of the manure which ensues from the stirring and loosening of the soil. - But the remaining ingredients of the manure serve no other present purpose but to increase unnecessarily the quantity of similar substances already contained in the soil. It were much better and cheaper to dress such land with silicious earth, fine quartz sand, or marl, or unslacked lime. In other cases, a similar application may be made of liquid manure. - It often happens that a soil rich in humus, has become exhausted of the incombustible elements required by plants; and it is customary to dress such land with barnyard manure, though a supply of liquid manure would be much more serviceable, as it holds in solution a large amount of fixed salts. If sulphuric acid have occasionally been mixed with the liquid manure, it will prove all the more efficient, because its ammonia has thereby been neutralized, and it is no longer in a caustic state. Again, if we have land which is deficient in humus, but which, judging from its composition - being clayey - may be presumed to contain a store of incombustible elements, the usual practice is to dress it with barnyard manure, though it would conduce much more to render it speedily productive, if it were dressed with muck or swamp mud and liquid manure, or lime. - When soil otherwise good is unproductive from want of calcareous earth, we dress with fresh slaked lime, or with marl, and soon realize better results than would follow from a dressing of manure alone. A light and sandy soil may be rendered very productive by a dressing of clay, the constituent elements of which are in part rendered soluble and serve as nutriment for the crop. If a soil be deficient in phosphoric acid, as is the case when the grain produced is small, ill-formed, and imperfectly filled, a dressing of blue or potter's clay, in combination with muck or swamp mud, or of bonedust mixed with dilute sulphuric acid, will not fail to produce excellent results. If the soil be sour, a dressing of fresh slaked lime, of marl, or of ashes, will be much more serviceable than the application of barnyard manure. In the last place, we have to consider that mode of manuring which is designed to produce in perfection certain specific crops which we desire to cultivate. Plants and vegetables, in accordance with the idea that they are always able to absorb from the atmosphere, in sufficient quantity, the gaseous elements to be derived therefrom, have been subdivided into three classes, according to the composition of their ashes - namely, alkaline