100 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



but chance animals ; in one case, the yield had averaged seven 

 pounds of butter each, per week ; in another case, nine pounds 

 had been obtained, when another cow, which was grazed in the 

 pasture, yielded a very inferior quantity. The cows stood in 

 well-ventilated stalls, in one case upon a stone pavement, in 

 another upon hard-trodden earth ; were well littered, and kept 

 quite clean. The whole of the manure is saved in this way, and 



bones preserved from their food, exceed the above quantity in every substance 

 except nitrogen and silica ; but the deficiency in these substances will be much 

 more than compensated by the atmosphere in the former case, and by the soil in 

 the latter ; so that I should not have the least hesitation in saying that the excre 

 ments of one hundred inmates of your Asylum, or any other, where the supply of 

 food is similar to the above, would keep one hundred acres of land on the common 

 four-course system of rotation in a constant state of fertility. It appears from the 

 calculations I have made, that for every two hundred and fifty pounds of flesh 

 produced, the elements of one acre of ground are extracted annually on the four- 

 course system, and assimilated by the animals consuming it ; from which it follows, 

 that for eveiy additional two hundred and fifty pounds of flesh produced, above 

 the quantity here given, the entire excretions of one man will be required. I 

 have purposely omitted the pigs in the above account, as they would live entirely 

 on the grains from the brewhouse and the refuse from the kitchen. 



&quot; Should you think it feasible to grow a succession of wheat crops, without any 

 intermission of green food, then the above quantity of ingredients would very well 

 supply sixty acres. The object of growing crops of turnips, clover, &c., is to 

 allow time for those constituents of white crops which exist in the soil, in an 

 insoluble state, to become soluble by the action of the atmosphere in sufficient 

 quantity to supply them. Were the whole of these added annually to a soil in 

 the form of manure, no rest would be required, and a succession of white crops 

 might thus be produced indefinitely. The cause of this not having been profita 

 bly accomplished hitherto, is not so much from any difficulty which attends it, as 

 from unwillingness on the part of the farmer, or his ignorance of the mode of 

 proceeding. Had a portion of those liquid manures, which are suffered to run to 

 waste, from every town and farm-yard in the kingdom, been used for this purpose, 

 Hiiccess would in all cases have attended the experiment; for these contain the 

 very elements, which arc rendered soluble in every soil by the year s rest, and 

 which, being assimilated by the plant, and afterwards removed in the grain, are 

 allowed to run to ivasle in the following year.&quot; 



I cannot with entire confidence endorse Mr. Haywood s views, especially on 

 the theory of vegetation, in respect to the cultivation of the same crops in succes 

 sion, on the same soil. It cannot be said to be yet determined whether a change 

 of crop is rendered necessary by the abstraction of certain ingredients of the soil, 

 which are again supplied to it by the influence of the atmosphere upon it when in 

 a state of rest, or by the excretions of the crop, according to the notions of Decan- 

 dolle, which are poisonous to a crop of the same kind coming in immediate succes 

 sion ; but the quotations which I have given from his paper show the workings of 

 a laborious and inquisitive mind, upon a. homely, and at the same time an impor 

 tant subject. 



