268 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBAXDRT. 



" He who limes without manure 

 Will leave his farm and family poor." 



The fact in this case is, as in that of Peruvian guano, that the 

 application of the single agent stimulates a production which takes 

 from the soil other elements of the ashes of plants than those 

 which the application itself furnishes. 



Therefore, while lime is one of the most valuable agents that 

 the farmer can employ, it is only by a careful husbanding of the 

 soil elements these increased crops extract that he will be able to 

 maintain the increased, or even the original fertility of the land. 



GREEN CROPS. 



After a poor soil has been brought to a condition in which it is 

 possible to produce upon it any considerable amount of vegetation, 

 the road to its entire reclamation is simple and easy. 



Probably the most important agent in the production of all fertile 

 soils has been the growth and decomposition of vegetation. In 

 some cases, forests, and in other cases, wild grasses have for ages 

 occupied the land, and by the yearly decomposition of their dying 

 parts — their stems and their leaves — have added, little by little, to 

 the bulk and richness of the earth. By this means not only does 

 the soil receive organic matter which had been drawn chiefly from 

 the atmosphere, but every leaf and every stem rejected by the 

 plant and added to the soil contains potash, lime, phosphoric acid, 

 and other elements of vegetable ashes, which had been slowly 

 withdrawn from the crude soil by the roots of the earlier vegeta- 

 tion — perhaps, in many instances, from considerable depths below 

 the surface. And thus, little by little, perhaps during ten years, 

 and perhaps during a thousand years, a constantly continuing pro- 

 cess has brought the soil from a condition in which it would 

 support only the lower orders of plants, or the more vigorous feed- 

 ing trees, to that in which it is susceptible of supporting plants 

 useful to man. 



The practice of manuring by the aid of green crops is an appli- 

 cation of the same principle to the requirements of agriculture ; 



