CORN XOT IXCREASED BY FARM-YARD MANURIXO. 241 



of the ' good ; ' but men do not comprelicnd for all that 

 why, ill so many cases, ignorance is the enemy of reason. 



There is no profession which for its successful practice 

 requires a larger extent of knowledge than agriculture, 

 and none in which the actual ignorance is greater. 



The farmer who practises the system of rotation, 

 depending exclusively upon the apphcation of farm-yard 

 manure, needs very httle observation, nay only to open his 

 eyes, in order to be convinced, by innumerable proofs, that 

 whatever may have been the outlay of labour and industry 

 applied to the production of form-yard manure, his fields 

 have not been thereby increased in the power of bearing 

 crops. 



K farm-yard manure was actually able to render ,a 

 -field permanently richer in nutritive substances than it is 

 by nature, we might expect that a course of manuring 

 for fifty years would necessarily produce a steady increase 

 in the crops. 



Now, if farmers who practise the system of rotation, 

 laying aside all bias and prejudice, would compare their 

 present with their former crops, or with those obtained 

 by their fathers or grandfathers, none of them would 

 be able to say that the crops have mcreased, and only 

 few that the average has remained the same. Most of 

 them would find, that on the average, the straw-crops 

 have turned out higher, but the corn-crops lower, and 

 proportionately lower than they formerly were higher ; 

 and that the surplus money which their parents gained by 

 the former ]»igh crops, the result of their improvements, 

 as they supposed, must now be paid out again, to pur- 

 chase manuring substances, which, as people formerly 

 thought, coidd be ' produced.' Now, however, they begin 

 to learn that though such substances may be produced 

 for a time they cannot be reproduced in perpetuity. 

 R 



