LIGHT SOILS— HOW THEY CAN BE WORKED. 67 



■whether it has been supplied to the soil in the shape of nitrogenous manures. 

 This brings us again to barnyard manures and artificial manures, and the 

 office humu3 plays in fertility; and this again leads to the question: Can the 

 fertility of a sandy soil be restored by any other means than by returning to 

 the soil the straw and grain upon which they grew, or in other woids, by 

 barnyard manure? and if there is any other way, is it available to our farm- 

 ers ? And is it profitable ? 



Admitting that barnyard manure would have kept up the fertility of the 

 soil if applied in sufficient quantities, the question arises, will artificial man- 

 ures answer the same purpose without the aid of barnyard manure? The 

 experience of Mr. John Prout, a prominent English farmer for the last 

 twenty years, says it can, for he has made farming on a sandy soil for this 

 lengh of time profitable without the application of barnyard manure. He 

 started twenty years ago with 450 acres of poor land, and has used nothing 

 but artificial manures, and the result is he has made business pay, and has 

 doubled the value of his estate in this time. lie sells all the wheat and 

 straw at auction, and buys artificial manures. Mr. Prout's system has 

 shown conclusively that the great supply of nitrogen, which was supposed to 

 come from manure, applied to the soil, is, in reality, largely taken from the 

 atmosphere. By careful experiments made by Dr. Voelker, of this soil, and 

 the chemical analysis of the crops taken off it, it was found that Mr. Prout 

 was only supplying thirty-eight and a half pounds of nitrogen year by year, 

 and seventy-one pounds was exported from the farm in the shape of grain, 

 etc. The question now arises, where did Mr. Prout obtain this nitrogen? 

 It was not from the soil, nor was it supplied in the manure, and tlie infer- 

 ence is it came from the atmosphere; if this is the case, the fertilization of 

 worn-out soils resolves itself into simply this: Supply the inorganic or min- 

 eral element and the rest comes from the iitmosphere. Now, it is well 

 known that barnyard manure contains for its bulk comparatively a small 

 proportion of essential salts fourteen pounds in a ton), such as potash and 

 phosphoric acid. Good wood ashes have twenty times more potash and ten 

 times more phosphoric acid than a given quantity of barnyard manure. But, 

 of course, the question arises again, will these substances of plant food in 

 such a concentrated form, be equally distributed to become at once available? 

 This is another point; and with this again comes the physical or mechanical 

 condition of the land, which, strictly speaking, would not come under the 

 subject in question, for it simply says restoring fertility, although I may say 

 here, parenthetically, that I am fully persuaded that but little of our soil, in 

 the strict sense of the word, is really worn out. A great quantity of our 

 supposed exhausted soil has a sufficient quantity of plant food, but it is not 

 available, owing to its physical condition ; or in other words, for the want 

 of proper drainage and thorough culture. Liebig says: " The influence of 

 mechanical operations of agriculture upon fertility of a soil is remarkable, 

 and often borders on the miraculous." I know land in Saginaw county 

 which was considered sterile, which, by drainage and thorough culture, 

 brought forth good crops. I have seen land heavily manured and rich, 

 chemically speaking, yet by bad culture it failed in production ; for this 

 reason I have no doubt manures often receive credit due to good tillage, and 

 I am strongly of the opinion that thorough culture, stirring the soil, is our 

 cheapest manure. But this is not the point; the supposition is that the 

 soil lacks the necessary elements of plant food, and the question is, how to 

 restore its fertility. No rule can be laid down which will cover every case. 



