A CLOVER-SICK FIELD. 157 



111 all pmblems of this kind, the secret of success is, 

 not to supjiose that the solution is easy, but that it is 

 attended with great difficulties ; for, if these did not 

 exist, experimental art would long ago have found the 

 solution. 



The many unsuccessful experiments of Messrs. Lawes 

 and Gilbert to make a clover-sick field again productive 

 for clover, have a certain value, in as far as they show 

 that mere experimenting leads to nothing. If I here 

 bestow upon these experiments an attention which they 

 do not deserve, my object is, not to submit them to a 

 passing criticism, but to warn the practical man how he 

 ought not to proceed in trying to solve his problems, if 

 he wishes that his efforts shoidd meet with success. The 

 conclusions Avhich Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert have drawn 

 from their numerous experiments are as follows : — 



They found that when land is not yet clover-sick, the 

 crop may frequently be increased by manuring with salts 

 of potash and superphosphate of lime ; that when, on 

 the contrary, the land is clover-sick, none of the ordinary 

 manures, whether ' artificial' or ' natural,' can be rehed 

 upon to secure a crop ; and that the only way is to wait 

 some years before repeating red clover on the same land. 



It is hardly necessary to remark, that what Messrs. 

 Lawes and Gilbert are here pleased to call conclusions, 

 are no conclusions at all ; what they have discovered 

 has been experienced by thousands of agriculturists 

 before them ; and the only conclusion which they were 

 permitted to draw should have been this — that in their 

 attempts, by certain manures, to make a clover-sick field 

 again productive for clover, they failed. In truth, they 

 have not striven, in the remotest degree, to procure infor- 

 mation about the causes of clover-sickness in a field, but 

 they have simply tried different manures, in the hope of 



