92 CHRONICLES OF A CLAY FAKM. 



stared at again, as a sort of conjurer's trick which 

 "you couldn't do again" Wise men shook their 

 heads and held their tongues at it. Nobody would 

 hate been at all surprised if, on going to the field some 

 fine morning, he found it altogether vanished, like 

 faery money, as quickly as it came : and as the roots 

 swelled and swelled into confirmed substance and 

 reality through September and October, the silence 

 about it became perfectly portentous. Reluctantly 

 the hoers confessed that they had not thinned it half 

 enough ; and, indeed, the loss, from that very com- 

 mon cause, was considerable. But where did the 

 crop come from? how did it grow? by what means, 

 short of the supernatural, could a mere powder, 

 however highly scented, sown by the hand, produce 

 this great, fat, thriving mass of roots and leaves? 

 Surely it must at any rate be but a fraud upon the 

 land after all ; and the next crop would show the 

 different results of real manure and a mere stim- 

 ulant. This was the point to which OPINION at last 

 settled down. "We'll wait and see," was the final 

 opinion expressed : and over many and many a farm 

 in England and Scotland men did wait, and did see. 

 Of all the practical illustrations that ever appeared 

 cotemporaneously with the announcement of a great 

 doctrine, the introduction and use of Guano during 



