214 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [June, 



dividend^ is but a delusive test of fertility, unless it be accompa- 

 nied by the prosperity of the soil, which represents capital. 



Every excess, whether on the side of expenditure or capitaliza- 

 tion, whether on the side of over-cropping the land or of unduly 

 augmenting its reserves, is equally a dereliction of agricultural 

 duty, and equally reprehensible as a form of waste. For, if dis- 

 proportionate expenditure dissipates the substance of wealth ia 

 space, disproportionate capitalization (the miser's fault) squanders 

 its usufruct in time. It is therefore our duty to call forth and 

 consume the largest crops we can ; but only and always on the 

 condition of not infringing on the reserves of the soil. If, through 

 indolence, we fail to produce the largest possible supply of food 

 for the consumption of the present generation, we retard, pro 

 tanto, the multiplication of our race, and fail in our duty to the 

 unborn. If, on the other hand, greed of immediate gain tempt 

 us to reduce the mineral balance in the soil (of which, be it, 

 remembered, we are not owners\>\\.i trustees'), we equally sin against 

 the unborn, by devouring their inheritance. We owe to our 

 fathers, and we are bound to pay to our children, who are also 

 theirs, a double debt, — life, and the means of its support. A 

 generous race as scornfully disdains to hand down to its posterity 

 an impoverished soil, as a degenerate blood. The nitrogen theory 

 failed to recognize these principles, and hence its downfall. 



Sewage-Manure Experiments at Rugby. — If, from the 

 point of view now reached, attention be given to the course of 

 experiments recently undertaken, and still in progress, at Rugby, 

 to determine the valiie of sewage-manure, it will be readily per- 

 ceived that these experiments are based on a misconception, as 

 well of the problem to be solved, as of the experimental method 

 which alone is adequate to its conclusive solution. 



The nature of this twofold misconception is sufficiently mani- 

 fested in the tests of value exclusively appealed to in these trials. 

 These tests are, on the one hand the quantity, and on the other 

 hand the quality, of the crops raised upon measured areas of 

 land, under the influence of different volumes of sewage, as com- 

 pared with the yield of a similar area kept purposely unmanured. 

 A few years ago this method would have met with very general 

 approbation and concurrence. But in the present state of agri-' 

 cultural knowledge its fallacy will be readily perceived. We are 

 now aware that the value of a manure does not bear any such 



