62 A FARMER'S YEAR 



so far as I can learn, will touch its foliage, and I think that evert 

 grubs and insects avoid the root, at least I never remember seeing 

 it at all eaten. If anyone knows what its real use may be I 

 shall be obliged if he would inform me. l 



By the way, taking into consideration the extraordinary re- 

 productive powers of this and other noxious plants, how does it 

 come about that when left to themselves they do not absolutely 

 and entirely possess the land? According to all the rules of 

 arithmetical progression it would be easy to prove that if you 

 started one dock in the middle of a hundred-acre field, in so 

 many months or years that field must be nothing but a tangled 

 mass of docks. Yet this would not be the case ; docks and other 

 weeds there would be in plenty, also a proportion of wholesome 

 grasses. What regulates the proportion and keeps the balance ? 

 How is it that one thing does not obtain the mastery ? The 

 same problem confronts us in the animal world. There is no 

 apparent reason why any particular noxious pest or insect should 

 not increase to such an extent as must make all other life im- 

 possible. Yet it never does. Even a bacillus knows where to stop, 

 for the Black Death was satisfied with killing half the, population. 



On my way home I stopped to see the cart being filled from 

 the lower clamp of swedes in the twelve-acre known as the 

 Thwaite field. For some reason or other these swedes have rotted 

 considerably. I can only suppose that the mild weather has 

 caused them to ferment ; and, indeed, in such a season as we have 

 had, they would have kept just as well, or better, not earthed up at 

 all, or left quite open at the top to allow the heat to escape. 

 Perhaps, if the theory advanced by my friend at the audit is 

 correct, it applies to swedes as well as to beet, and these were 

 ' haled ' too dry. Swedes grown with artificial manure are said to 

 rot more readily than others, but these in question were treated 

 with farmyard muck. Curiously enough, there are many more 

 decayed bulbs in the middle than at either end of the hale. 



January 19. A day of woe and desolation ! My best ox is 

 1 For an answer to the above question see p. 230. 



