THE FIRST AND FUNDA:\IENTAL PRINCIPLE IN AGRICULTURE. 3 



land is reduced in vegetable matter so that the produce is 

 diminished by twelve bushels an acre of oats, what does it 

 amount to? One quarter four bushels at twenty shilKngs j)er 

 quarter is equal to thirty shillings per acre, and on a farm of 

 200 acres on a five-course rotation, say on eighty acres of oats, 

 there would be a deficiency of 120 quarters, and at twenty 

 shillings amounts to £120 a year. But this does not represent 

 all the diminished return to the farmer, for the crops of turnips 

 and grass are more dependent upon a good supply of vegetable 

 matter in the soil than grain crops. Barring exceptions, I 

 think it will be conceded that our special manures — as they 

 have been applied to the hare soil — have failed to keep up the 

 fertility of the land. I am inclined to go further, and say that 

 along with certain conditions they have been the means of 

 diminishing the fertility and value of the cultivated area of 

 this country to an extent not yet fully admitted by the few nor 

 thought of by the many. And I am astonished that this point 

 has escaped the notice of our men of science, because several 

 of these gentlemen have frequently written about a certain 

 fertility being in the soil, and of its being extracted from the 

 soil, but have always alluded to it in vague terms ; never 

 stating what it was composed of. I would like to ask those 

 who are acquainted with chemistry, what the natural sap of a 

 soil rich in vegetable matter is composed of. It is not water, 

 for every practical farmer knows that it does not dry so soon 

 as rain-water; this substance in rich land has a wonderful 

 faculty in defending drought when not unduly exposed. 



Seeing that the land had lost that healthy condition to pro- 

 duce the fine strong clover as of yore, and the sound turnips 

 of thirty years ago, it was surely time for our men of science 

 to have inquired into the cause of this unhealthy condition of 

 the soil. A really skilful doctor w^ould have endeavoured to 

 have found out the disorder before attempting a cure. This 

 has not been done by our men of science, consequently 

 failure and disappointment have been the rule at our experi- 

 mental stations. I may fairly ask, what is an uamanured 

 plot ? I answer Nature half-stripped of her natural fertility, 

 a standard of poverty set up to test the value of dilTerent 

 kinds of manures. I cannot discern any principle in such a 

 mode of procedure, and one thing is certain, that no farmer 

 can follow such a practice long with pr(jfit ; and what is not 

 profitable in agriculture nmst be set down as wrong in princi]>lo, 

 and consequently sooner or later abandoned. Have the value 

 of these manures been tested upon a sound basis at our ex- 

 perimental stations? I answer, No. Before this can be done 

 the whole surface-soil containing vegetable matter — living and 

 dead — would require to be removed, and the subsoil trenched 

 up for the ])urpose, or these stations removed to an altitude 

 500 feet above sea-level, and to the poorest soil there that can 



