76 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FAEM. 



come back again from the clouds. They soon found 

 out that. Human instinct and experience had dis- 

 covered the gradual loss of something, which neither 

 rain nor sunshine, nor even the farm-made manure, 

 deprived of these elements, could restore, long be- 

 fore Davy or Liebig were born, or Sulphates and 

 Phosphates had been christened : and hence the 

 Marl-pits. 



Curious and awkward relics of a bygone day they 

 were, dotted about over my farm, and looking more 

 numerous and unmeaning than ever, after the en- 

 largement of the fields, and the straightening of the 

 few fences that were left. Load after load of clay 

 from the drains, and some hundred butts of felled 

 trees, and useless pollards from the vanished hedge- 

 rows, were cast headlong into their voracious depths : 

 but enough yet remained, and will long remain, to 

 tell of the enormous labor that must once have been 

 expended in excavating a manure more costly in its 

 application than the Guano which from the far 

 islands of the Pacific Ocean, conveyed by sea and 

 land, thousand upon thousand of miles, finds its des- 

 tination at last upon the field of British husbandry. 



Well might the farmer of the olden time bore like 

 a "Well-sinker, at whatever amount of labor, for aught 

 in the shape of a restorative or manure, when " the 



