STORE CATTLE 13 



I am not concerned to defend such a practice. On the 

 contrary, I agree with the many, though not the majority of, 

 agricultural authorities who have condemned this form of waste- 

 fulness. For over ten years I have spoken and written against 

 the useless extravagance of supplying plant-food through the 

 excreta of overfed bullocks, and I am thankful to know that I 

 have not worked altogether in vain, though the pernicious 

 system was still very prevalent when war broke out. 



It must, however, be remembered that there was much excuse 

 for this extravagance. It had behind it a very long tradition, 

 and tradition is always strong in the complicated business of 

 farming; experience, moreover, had shown rich farmyard 

 manure to be not only the best, but almost the sole, means of 

 supplying the land with a full amount of available plant-food. 

 This was indeed the case before the advent of the agricultural 

 chemist. "Good Horn Good Corn" w T as the motto of every 

 practical man whose empirical knowledge had been handed 

 down to him through several generations of successful farmer- 

 ancestors. 



At first the chemist did little to improve the ordinary plan; 

 and the process of learning nature's method of contriving the 

 marvellous food-manufacture in the soil is so complicated, that 

 it may almost be said that for some time the man of science did 

 much to confirm the practical man in the belief that " chemical " 

 manures could not replace the plant-food in real good "muck." 



But Lawes and Gilbert through their research and field-trial 

 work at Rothamsted demonstrated that plant-food had many 

 other sources than that which came from rich cakes passed 

 through animals to the manure-heap. The great work of these 

 masters was, however, much handicapped by some of their 

 followers, who went beyond their teaching in unduly pressing 

 the claims of the stuffs' that could be carried about in a sack. 

 These early followers, in their enthusiasm for the valuable con- 

 ,stituents of the concentrated fertilizers, were apt to forget the 

 value of humus contained in farmyard manure, and, further, 

 to overlook the prime necessity of using humus and implements 

 to obtain proper texture. They were liable, too, to omit from 

 their teaching the fact that weeds, when not mastered by good 



