This book was the first work to attack Von Liebig's salt fertilizer thesis, and it stands as valid today as when first written over 100 years ago. Translated from the German writings of Julius Hensel, the book was designed to introduce the people of the U.S. to the idea that plants require healthy food in order to flourish, just as a human being does. It describes a then new and rational system for fertilization which has become science today — fertilizing with stone dust. Hensel went searching for food for plants and found it in the primeval rocks. Fed on such foods, plants will yield healthy, wholesome and life sustaining food that escapes disease and parasites.