BONES FROM WATERLOO. 257 



right, he said that the more plants there were grown on any 

 land, when they were not removed, the more they improved 

 the land. If that is so, is not the clean culture that we 

 have been brought up to believe in a wrong principle ? If a 

 man raises a crop of onions, for instance, and raises a large _ 

 crop of j)urslane with it, although he may not get so large a 

 crop of onions, is not his laud really in a better condition 

 than it would have been if he had killed the purslane when 

 it was very young ? That is the idea I want to suggest. 



Professor Stockbridge. My opinion is, that weeds never 

 hurt the land, but always make it better ; but they do hurt 

 the crop, and sometimes the pocket immediately. I always 

 know that a man's land is improving when I go along the 

 road and see a crop covered with weeds ; but I know he is 

 not improving very much. 



Mr. Whitaker. I would like to ask the professor one or 

 two questions, and one is with reference to the experiments 

 of Lawes & Gilbert. As I understood him, he conve3^ed the 

 idea that Lawes & Gilbert have been carrying on the ex- 

 periment of raising wheat on a certain piece of land for a 

 succession of years, depending on the elements of fertility 

 stored in the soil to supply those plants, without adding 

 rhanure of any kind. Did I correctly understand him? 



Professor Stockbridge. Yes, sir. 



Mr. Whitaker. I do not understand Lawes & Gilbert 

 as having conducted those experiments in that manner, 

 but that the experiments they have been conducting have 

 been carried on by applying manurial constituents to the 

 •plants, feeding them, and getting crops in that way. The 

 soils of England are as exhaustible as those of America : the 

 difference is in the management of these soils. And, Mr. 

 President, I will ask the indulgence of the Board a few 

 moments, and I may say some things on that subject that 

 will startle them a little. We are all aware that England 

 produces a great deal less food than she consumes ; that she 

 goes out far and wide to obtain fertilizers for the purpose 

 of producing this food. She has moved islands, I might say 

 mountains, of guano into her soil: she once brought even 

 the bones from Waterloo to make phosphate of lime for the 

 purpose of replenishing her soil. You here are raising corn 

 and raising wheat, and exhausting your soils, and sending 



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