272 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



living for the man who tilled it he simply moved to a new 

 place. Land was cheap, wealth was not sought for as it is 

 to-day, and no effort was made to maintain the. soil of the 

 farm in its original productiveness. The use of commercial 

 fertilizers, and all fertilizing material formed on the farm, 

 decreases with amazing rapidity as we leave the older settled 

 portions of the country. Throughout the South immense 

 quantities of guano and substances which pass under that 

 name, phosphates of various kinds, nitrates, etc., are purchased 

 and paid for in hard cash ; but there is almost no farm- 

 formed fertilizer, while there is no part of the country which 

 offers such facilities for its production as is found throughout 

 that whole region where it is so badly needed. 



The Agricultural Year Book for 1902 reports that there 

 are extensive regions in the United States where barn manure 

 is considered a nuisance. It may be had in a certain county 

 in Oregon by any neighbor who will haul it away, and in an- 

 other county of the same state it is burned, as the cheapest 

 means of disposal. The report tells of parts of Kansas where 

 it is buried or placed in a heap at one side of the field, as if 

 the owner were in a quandary as to how to get rid of it. In 

 North Dakota farmers may be found who haul this immensely 

 valuable material to heaps, where it is allowed to remain 

 until the elements wash it away and cause it to disappear. 

 In Missouri it is piled by the roadside, and in Idaho it is 

 scraped up into "piles as high as a barn." In many counties 

 between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean farmers 

 not only find it a nuisance but they have a positive grievance 

 against it, claiming that it produces dog fennel and other 

 weeds, and in some localities that it "poisons" the soil. 



With such views of valuable farm-made fertilizing material. 



