THE CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



V 



PART THIRD. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



THE EXHAUSTION OF THE SOIL. 



The soil may be compared to a manufactory, to which is 

 attached a storehouse for the keeping of the raw materials 

 which are from time to time worked up in the factory ; and 

 the manufactured products, which are made up. When in 

 time of active business an excessive demand occurs for the 

 finished goods beyond the power of the factory to supply 

 them, the stock is exhausted; and no more sales or deliver- 

 ies can be made until the factory has had time to refurnish 

 the store with a new stock. But if one needed material, 

 wool; cotton ; dye stuff; oil for the machinery ; fuel for the 

 furnace for driving the engine, or money to pay for the la- 

 bor, is wanting, the work stops. There may be everything 

 but a little oil even; or one single color in the dye house; 

 yet everything must stop until this necessary article is sup- 

 plied. The experienced owner and manager, however, 

 makes it his business to see that every one of these needed 

 articles are kept in stock ready for instant supply when 

 called for. He keeps a stock book in which is entered all 

 receipts and all expenditures of all these supplies, and he 

 carefully looks over this book at stated times and notices 

 how the consumption is going on, that a fresh stock may be 

 laid in before the old is exhausted and work might be stop- 

 ped for want of some one little thing. 



This is precisely what the farmer should do and must do 

 for the most successful culture of his crops. He has a store 

 of raw materials in his soil, and nature carries on there a 

 manufactory in which these raw materials are used for the 



