1912] The Work of the Dominion Experimental Farms. 25 



this process is extremely slow. The unwise farmer can do more harm to 

 a soil in a decade than Nature can remedy possibly in centuries. 



How, then, are soils to be maintained in a productive state and 

 at the same time yield a profit for their working? First, in the keeping of 

 live stock ; in the manure so obtained we have the opportunity of restor- 

 ing to the soil eight-tenths of the plant food taken from it in the crops 

 they consume. In manures we have or ought to have the necessary and 

 natural by-product of every farm. The farmer should recognise it as the 

 home supply of plant food and humus-forming material — the chief means 

 of holding and increasing the productiveness of his soils. This truth is 

 not as yet fully realised by all our people. We do not keep sufficient 

 live stock on our farms. 



Many investigations have been conducted with manures, their 

 right care and application, but we cannot now enter upon details. We 

 have determined the tremendous losses in plant food, especially nitrogen, 

 and in organic matter, that ensue by leaching and fermentation, when 

 the manure is allowed to lie for months, as it frequently is, in loose heaps 

 in the open barnyard. We have showed that while manure rotted under 

 good conditions contains, weight for weight, more plant food than fresh 

 manure, yet the losses in rotting may and very frequently do, out- 

 balance the benefits. Our field and laboratory work alike prove that the 

 safest storehouse for manure is the soil, and that the farmer who gets his 

 manure while still fresh into the soil returns to it for the future use of his 

 crops much more plant nourishment than he who allows the manure to 

 accumulate in piles that receive little or no care, and which, therefore, 

 must waste by excessive fermentation and leaching, or both. 



Secondly, the land must be put under a proper rotation of crops. 

 There are many reasons for this, chemical and physical. We have 

 already learnt the disastrous effect on the soil's humus and nitrogen by 

 continuous grain growing ; the same would be true if we endeavoured to 

 grow a hoed crop, as potatoes, for instance, year after year. The soil must 

 be enriched by the sowing of a sod-forming, fibre-producing crop — in 

 other words, the land must be occasionally laid down to grass. Much 

 work has been done at almost all the Experimental Farms in testing out 

 the merits and economy of different rotations, to meet the varying needs 

 and conditions of agriculture as found in widely distant parts of the 

 Dominion. As a lesson to be learnt from this work it may be stated that 

 the Central Experimental Farm records furnish a number of examples 

 of the good effects of proper cultural methods and right rotations upon 

 the crop-producing powers of soils. As among the most striking might 

 be cited the following: 



In 1899 a system of crop rotation was introduced on that part of 



