164< 



THE tARMiili'tei MAGAZINE. 



future, for the time may perhaps come, even ia half a 

 ceatury, that not one of those countries upon whose excess 

 England has hitherto drawn will be able to supply her with 

 corn, and that, too, from the natural law that what is true of 

 the smallest piece of ground ia true also of a great country. 

 It ceases to ptoJuce corn if the conditions of the reproduction 

 of the corn which has been carried off are not restored to it. 

 Nor is it, furthermore, certain whether the corn-growing 

 countries will always desire to exchange their com for the 

 products of English industry, since they may no longer need 

 these products, or, at least not in the ratio of England's need 

 of corn. In the countries of Euroje and ia the United States 

 of North America great efforts are made to become ia this 

 respect independent of England, as being in the end the only 

 way of keeping the corn prices in these countries so as to re- 

 pay the labourer. 



In the United States the population increases at a still 

 greater ratio than in other countries, while the corn produc- 

 tion upon the laud under cultivation has constantly fallen off. 



History teaches that not one of all those countries which 

 have produced corn for other lands have remained corn- 

 markets, and England has contributed her full .share towards 

 rendering unproductive the best lands of the United States, 

 which have supplied her with corn, precisely as old Rome 

 robbed Sardinia, Sicily, and the rich lands of the African coast 

 of their fertility. 



Finally, it ia impossible iu civilized countries to raise 

 the corn production beyond a certain limit, and this limit has 

 become so narrow that our fields are no longer capable of a 

 higher yield without an increase of their effective elements by 

 the introduction of manures from abroad. 



By the application of guano and bones, the farmer of most 

 limited capacity learns the real import of such increase ; he 

 learns that the pure system of stall or home-made manures is 

 the true and genuine robber system. In consequence of his 

 restoring in the guano and bones but a very small portion of 

 those very small elements of seeds and of fodder which had 

 been withdrawn from his fields by centuries of cultivation, 

 their products are wonderfully increased. Experiments insti- 

 tuted with special reference to this end in six differenc parts 

 of the kingdom of Saxony showed that each hundred-weight of 

 guano put upon a field produced ISOlbs. of wheat, 4001b3. of 

 potatoes, and 2801bs. of clover more than the same sized piece 

 of ground without guano ; and from this it may be calculated 

 how enormously the corn and flesh production of Europe has 

 been increased by the yearly importation of 100,000 tons, or 

 2,000,000 cwt. of guano. 



The effect of guano and bones should have taught the 

 farmer the real cause of the exhaustion of his fields; it should 

 have taught him in what a condition of perpetual fertility he 

 might have preserved his fields if the elements of the guano 

 which he has transported in the shape of meat and products 

 of his fields into the cities were recovered and brought into a 

 form which would admit of their being restored to his fields 

 every year. 



To an understanding of this, however, the farmer has not 

 yet come ; for, as his forefathers believed that the soil of their 

 fields was inexhaustible, so the farmer of the present day be- 

 lieves that the introduction of manures from abroad will have 

 no end. It is much simpler, he thinks, to buy guano end 

 bones than to collect their elements from the sewers of towns ; 

 and if a lack of the former should ever arise, it will then be 

 time enough to think of a resort to the latter. But of all the 

 erroneous opinions of the farmers, this ia the most dangerous 

 and fatal. 



If it ia perceived that no country can perpetually supply 

 another with corn, then raust it be still easier to understand 

 that an importation of manures from another country must 

 cease still earlier, since their exportation diminishes the pro- 

 duction of corn and meat iu that country in so rapid propor- 

 tions that this decrease in a very short time forbids the expor- 

 tation of manures. If it is considered that a pound of bones 

 contains in its phosphoric acid a necessary condition for the 

 production of GOlbs. of wheat, that the English fields have 

 become capable by the importation of 1,000 tons of bones of 

 producing 200,000 bushels more of wheat in a series of years 

 than they would have produced without this supply, then we 

 can judge of the immense loss of fertility which the German 

 fields have sustained by the exportation of so many hundred 

 thousand tons of bones which have gone from Germany to 



England. It will be conceived that if this exportation had 

 continued, Germany would have been brought to that point 

 that she would no longer have been able to supply the demand 

 of her own population for corn. In many parts of Germany, 

 from which fora.erly large quantities of bones were exported, 

 it has now already come to be the case thivt those bones must 

 be, at a much higher price, bought back again in the (orm of 

 guano ia order to obtain the paying crops of former times. 



The exportation of bones for so many years from Germany 

 was possible only because the German agriculturists had less 

 knowledge of the real nature of their business than the 

 English, believing, as they did, that practice and science 

 taught doctrines contradictory to each other, and were funda- 

 mentally different things, and that they must trust, not in the 

 laws of Nature, but in receipts. Things have now changed 

 for the better, although not to the extent which was to be 

 desired, for the German farmers do not as yet generally under- 

 stand the value of the elements of bones for preserving the 

 prsaent fertility of their fields (not to speak of the restoration 

 of their former fertility), for if they all understood this, no one 

 could have any more bones — at all events no more than those 

 which he brings to market in his graiu and cattle. 



The prices of bones have become so high in Germany as 

 to forbid their exportation ; aud if the question should be put 

 to English commerce whence it fuiuishes the Eugliah farmer 

 with this to him so indispensable manure, the answer would 

 produce astonishment ; for this commerce has already so far 

 robbed all the inhabited parts of the earth, that the manufac- 

 turer of superphosphate can only set his hopes upon the 

 phosphate of lime of the mineral kingdom. 



In relation to guano, I have been assured that iu 20 to 25 

 years, if the use of guano should increase in even the same 

 proportion as hitherto, there will not remain in South A merica 

 enough to freight a ship. We will, however, suppose its sup- 

 ply and that of bones to continue for 50 years, or even longer ; 

 then what will be the condition of England when the supply 

 of guano and bones is exhausted ? 



This is one of the easiest of all questions to answer. If the 

 common " sewerage system" is retained, then the imported 

 manures, guano, and'bones make their way into the sewers of 

 the cities, which, like the bottomless pit, have for centuries 

 swallowed up the guano elements of the English fields, and 

 after a series of years the land will find itself in precisely the 

 condition it was iu before the importation of guano aud bones 

 commenced; and after England shall have robbed the cultivated 

 lands of Europe even to complete exhaustion, and taken from 

 them the power to furnish her longer with corn and manure, 

 then she will not be richer than before in the means of produ- 

 cing corn and meat, but will from that time forth become 

 even poorer in these means. 



By means of the importation of guano and bones the popu- 

 lation has, however, in consequence of the increased production 

 of corn and meat, increased in a greater ratio than would 

 have been possible without this importation of manures, and 

 this population will make upou the rulers of the State their 

 natural demand for food. 



If men do not deem it desirable that the balance between 

 population and the supply of food be restored by means of 

 exterminating wars and revolutions (in which the want of food 

 has always played a certain part), or by means of wasting 

 plagues, pestilence, and famine, or by emigration en masse, 

 then should they rtflect that the time has arrived for getting a 

 clear view in regard to the causes of existence and increase of 

 population. A very little reflection will lead to the conviction 

 that the relations of populations are governed by a great and 

 comprehensive natural law, according to which the return 

 duration, increase or diminution of a natural phenome-' 

 non depends upon the return, duration, increase, or 

 diminution of its conditions. This law governs the 

 return of the harvests upon our fields, the main- 

 tenance aud increase of the populations; and it is easy to see 

 thst a violation of this natural law must exert upon all these 

 relations a pernicious influence which can be set aside in no 

 other way than by the removal of its causes, If, then, it is 

 known that certain existing circumstances work deleteriously 

 upon the fields ; if it can be foreseen that their contiuuanca 

 must bring about the ruin of agriculture ; if there is but e 

 single one of all the means which have hitherto resisted this 

 deleterious influence, a;sd made it less sensibly felt, which can 

 be safely relied upon to secure a perpetual fertility to our 



