THE SOIL NOT INEXHAUSTIBLE. 247 



All tlie fields that are not reached by the river lose 

 their productiveness unless manured. In Egypt, the 

 amoimt of the crop to be expected is calculated from the 

 height of the water of the Nile ; and in the East Indies 

 a famine is the inevitable consequence whenever there 

 happens to be no inundation. 



Nature herself, in these striking instances, points out to 

 man the proper course of proceeding for keeping up the 

 productiveness of the land. (See Appendix H.) 



The notion of our ignorant practical husbandmen, that 

 the soil contains ample store of the elements of food to 

 enable them to pursue their system of agriculture, is due 

 partly to the excellent quality of the land, but also to 

 their skill in robbing it. The man who attempts to gain 

 money by filing the weight of one gold piece from a 

 thousand, cannot plead, in extenuation, that it is re- 

 marked by no one, but if discovered he is punished by 

 the law; for everybody knows that the fraudulent act, 

 repeated a thousand times, would ultimately leave nothing 

 of the gold pieces. A similar law, from which, more- 

 over, there is no escape, punishes the agriculturist who 

 would make us believe that he knows the exact store of 

 available food elements in his land, and how far it will go ; 

 and who deceives himself when he fancies he is enriching 

 his field by bestowing on the arable surface soil the 

 matters taken from the deeper layers. 



There is another class of agriculturists consisting of 

 men with a small stock of knowledge joined to a limited 

 imderstanding, who, indeed, fully recognise the law of 

 rerititution, but interpret it after their own fashion. They 

 assert and teach that part of the law only, and not the 

 whole, applies to cultivated fields; that certain consti- 

 tuents, unquestionably, must be restored to the soil to 

 keep up its productiveness, but that all the others are 



