368 THE FAT OF THE LAND 



Abandoned farms are not known in Belgium 

 and France, though the soil has been cultivated 

 for a thousand years, and was originally no better 

 than our New England farms, and not nearly so 

 good as hundreds of those which are practically 

 given over to " old fields " in Virginia. 



It is neglect that impoverishes land, not use. 

 Intelligent use makes land better year by year. 

 The only way to wear out land is to starve and 

 to rob it at the same time. Food for man and 

 beast may be taken from the soil for thousands 

 of years without depleting it. All it asks in re- 

 turn is the refuse, carefully saved, properly ap- 

 plied, and thoroughly worked in to make it 

 available. If, in addition to this, a cover crop 

 of some leguminous plant be occasionally turned 

 under, the soil may actually increase in fertility, 

 though it be heavily cropped each year. 



It would pay the young American farmer to 

 study Belgian methods, crude though they are, 

 for the insight he could gain into th3 possibilities 

 of continuous production. The greatest number 

 of people to the square mile in the inhabited 

 globe live in this little, ill-conditioned kingdom, 

 and most of them get their living from the soil. 

 It has been the battle-field of Europe : a thousand 

 armies have harrowed it ; human blood has 

 drenched it from Liege to Ostend ; it has been 

 depopulated again and again. But it springs into 

 new life after each catastrophe, simply because 

 the soil is prolific of farmers, and they cannot be 



