idea. It is comparatively easy to drive one horse, but when it comes 

 to four or six there are a good many Unes to keep at just the proper 

 slack or tightness and there is a constant letting up and taking out. 

 As I said before, my experience of several seasons has made me 

 firm in the belief that adding humus is the first and leading idea in 

 the restoration to fertility of worn-out soils. 



" But I do not forget that there are a number of other things in 

 this soil laboratory which should not be overlooked. In carrying 

 on my experiments I find that I have more than one set of reins, 

 to manage. One reading lesson showed us that the leading agents 

 in this laboratory are moisture (not standing M^ater), heat and air, 

 and tliat these must be in the right proportions to have good results. 

 Many soils are so made that these agents occur in about the right 

 relations, and no artificial aids, as drainage, are needed ; yet the 

 productiveness of the soils to-day is much less than years ago. I 

 would advise those who intend to make experiments in restoring 

 fertility to select, for first trial, land which has given paying crops 

 at some time in the past, for it is probable that moisture, heat and 

 air will be present in such soils in the right conditions. Right here 

 I wish to warn evei-ybody against trying to restore fertility on land 

 that never was fertile. Restoring fertility is hard enough, say 

 nothing about creating it. 



""The piece of land on which I have been making my experi- 

 ments is part of a farm which I bought a few years ago. It 

 has been rented and abused by tenants for many years. Brush 

 grew in what were fence corners before the fences rotted, and there 

 was a circle of weeds about each stump. It had been a long time 

 since grass seed would catch on that land. Of late years the 

 plowed land had been sown to buckwheat, and no crop was cer- 

 tain without a liberal application of ' phosphate' What was not 

 under the plow grew up to ' poverty grass.' My father-in-law tells 

 me that before the war and mowing machines, he mowed grass in 

 those fields shoulder high, and that timothy did not require reseed- 

 ing for five seasons or more. 



I think my chances are good for getting those fields back to 

 their early productiveness, without having them cost me more than 



574 



