12 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 



with each succeeding year, they would all have yielded abundant- 

 ly, yet left no portion of the soil utterly robbed of any single 

 element. Experience affirms that the rotation of crops has taken 

 far more from the soil than the adverse system, which Science 

 unhesitatingly corroborates, and adds that, while rotation has 

 taken more from the soil, it has nevertheless left it in better con- 

 dition to bear future harvests ; and this Experience will in due 

 time ratify and establish. 



Here, then, Experience has been outstripped by Science, whose 

 torch irradiates the Futqre with light drawn directly from the 

 Present, not reflected from the Past. Experience has shown that 

 a particular rotation is preferable to the growth of the same 

 plant on the same soil for a succession of years ; but Science fore- 

 casts beyond this, and affirms that any possible rotation must be 

 preferable to incessant and unchanging repetition, for reasons 

 which lie deep in the bosom of Nature and are inseparable from 

 her very vitality. As surely as Experience has demonstrated the 

 expediency of keeping cattle where they have grass and water 

 both, instead of shutting up a part where they will have grass enough 

 but no water, and the residue where they will have abundance 

 of water but no grass or other food, so clearly does Science dem- 

 onstrate the advantage of growing different crops in rotation. 



But in answering our first question, " Why should different 

 crops be grown in rotation ?" Science has thrown open a wide 

 field of profitable inquiry. We have seen that five good crops 

 of Indian Corn cannot be grown off the same ground for five suc- 

 cessive years, unless by virtue of profuse and expensive manur- 

 ing; because each crop has absorbed an undue proportion of cer- 

 tain elements or properties essential to Corn, leaving others, less 

 vital to Maize, but more necessary to Wheat, Clover, &c., undis- 

 turbed in the soil. We now know, therefore, that any average 

 soil, regarded with reference to any particular plant, possesses 

 certain elements in excess, while it is deficient in others ; and we 

 demand of Science that she tell us just how we may most cheaply 

 and easily supply, not elements of fertility in general, but those 

 particular elements which are deficient, considered with reference 



