CHAPTER VIII. 



MANURES. 



So long as men are cultivating a soil whose virgin fertility 

 responds to their demands with unfailing generosity, so long as the 

 tickling hoe brings the brightest harvest smile, it is useless to talk 

 to them about manure. Indeed, it would not pay under such 

 circumstances to use manure, and we have no right to expect 

 any thing to be done in farming that doe's not pay. 



The East has been, and the West now is (very largely) in the 

 hands of farmers who found, or who find, that their fields produce 

 large crops, year after year, without the cost and labor of manur- 

 ing. Manure would not increase their yield at all in proportion 

 to the outlay. That the soil is being made less valuable for pos- 

 terity, its occupants cannot be convinced. Their particular locality 

 is an exception to the inexorable rule ; it always is, — and they 

 do not always live long enough to be convinced to the contrary. 

 After all, why need they be convinced ? It would be better for 

 posterity that they should prevent the soil from growing poor ; 

 but posterity, when its time shall come, will be amply repaid for 

 making it rich again, and will have, by reason of a more dense 

 population, better facilities for doing so. In the abstract, it is a 

 sad thing to see the power of production diminishing under cul- 

 tivation ; but .we have no just right to blame those who are the 

 cause of the decrease. They are entitled to their use of the land, 

 and if they leave it less fertile than they found it, they, at the 

 same time, in America at least, leave it tamed, peopled, and better 

 fitted for habitation. What they destroy on the one hand, they 

 more than build up on the other. 



The farmers of the West deal with wide areas and large herds. 



