IGNORANT PRACTICAL MEN. 249 



Stand how to clTect this conversion, all the potash in his 

 soil is of no earthly use to him. 



The notion that the farmer need only restore to his 

 land certain substances, without troubling himself about 

 the rest, might not be prejudicial if those who entertained 

 it confined the application to their own farms ; but, as a 

 matter of instruction to others, it is untrue and quite 

 exceptionable. It is calculated for the low intellectual 

 standard of the practical man, who, if he in any way 

 succeeds, by certain alterations, in his system, or by the 

 use of certain manuring agents in obtaining better results 

 than another, attiibutes his success to his own sagacity 

 rather than to the superior quality of his land. He does 

 not even know that the other has tried the very same 

 plans as himself, only without attaining so favourable a 

 result. Our ignorant practical husbandman starts upon 

 the assumption that all fields are the same in condition as 

 his own, and that, therefore, the same system which 

 answers on his farm ought to do equally well on every 

 other ; that the manure which he finds useful ought to be 

 equally useful to others ; that the deficiencies in his field 

 are the same in all other fields ; that what he exports 

 from his land, others export from theirs ; and what he is 

 called upon to restore to his soil, others are equally called 

 upon to restore to theirs. 



Although he knows next to nothing of the condition 

 (jf his own land, with which it would, indeed, require 

 many years of careful observation to become familiar, 

 and is most profoundly ignorant about the condition of 

 the land in any other part, although he never has 

 troubled himself with reflecting upon tlie causes of his 

 success in the cultivation of his fields, and is quite aware 

 that the advice of agriculturists from other parts, re- 

 specting manuring, rotation of crops, and the general 



