150 



STATES OF THE RIVER PLATE. 



It is evident from this that, by applying to the land 

 from which the food of the animals has been reaped, the 

 excrements of the animals, such land is restored to more 

 or less the same state of productiveness as before the crops 

 were grown ; and if to this be added a little bone manure 

 crushed bones or bone ash on old pasture lands, pad- 

 docks, or ' potreros,' on which numbers of animals have 

 grown and lived, and generation after generation sold off, 

 the productiveness of these fields will be restored, as that 

 which was removed in the bones will be thus returned to 

 the soil, and the result will be that these lands will 

 again, if not overstocked, produce the good nutritious 

 grasses which in part or wholly had disappeared from 

 them. 



Comparatively sterile soils can be made highly produc- 

 tive by efficient tillage and liberal manuring, as thereby 

 their physical as well as chemical conditions will be mate- 

 rially modified or wholly changed. 



The assertion made at the commencement of this treatise, 

 of the necessity of a combination of the pastoral and 



