RESULTS OF FARM-YARD MANURING. 231 



the arable soil is continually decreasing. With the ulti- 

 mate consumption of the excess of corn-constituents 

 accumulated in the arable soil, the time comes when the 

 corn-crop begins to diminish, whereas the produce of 

 straw is comparatively higher than before, as the con- 

 ditions for the formation of straw have been steadily 

 increasing. 



Of course, the farmer cannot fail to remark tlie dimi- 

 nution of his corn-crops, which induces him to have 

 recourse to drainage, to improved tillage, and to the 

 substitution of other cultivated plants, in heu of clover 

 and turnips. If the subsoil of his fields will permit it, 

 he now includes in his rotation lucerne and sainfoin, 

 whose still longer and more widely spreading roots 

 enable them to reach yet deeper layers of the ground 

 than the red clover ; until finally he employs the yellow 

 lupine, which may truly be called the 'hunger-plant.' 



A new increase of produce is the result of these ' im- 

 provements ' in his system of cultivation by farm-yard 

 manuring, which the farmer looks upon as a great advance. 

 A fresh store of nutritive substances, brought up from 

 the deeper layers of the soil, may possibly accumulate 

 again in the arable surface soil ; but these deeper layers 

 also will be gradually exhausted, and the accumulated 

 store in the arable surface soil Avill also be consumed. 



This is the natural termination of cultivation by the 

 system of farm-yard manuring. 



The fields of the Saxon experiments afford very fair 

 illustrations of the different conditions to wliich arable 

 land in general is brought, by a pure system of farm- 

 yard manuring. 



The field at Cunnersdorf is in the first stage, the 

 Mausegast field in the second, the fields at Kotitz and 



