PREFACE 



The use of some form of fertiliser is becoming more 

 and more a mark of modern agriculture. Though many 

 farmers, and among them some of our best, still pro- 

 fess to scorn all artificial manures and pin their faith 

 on the dung made by their stock, they none the less 

 are buying the elements of fertility — nitrogen, phos- 

 phoric acid, and potash — in the cakes and other feeding 

 stuffs which they bring from some outside source and con- 

 sume on their farms. It is the continual introduction 

 of plant food from outside which distinguishes modern 

 intensive methods of cultivation from the old farming. 

 Prior to a period which roughly coincides with the 

 foundation of the Royal Agricultural Society of Eng- 

 land in 1838, the farmer, living on the inherent capital 

 of the soil, was forced into a conservative system of 

 cultivation, which by restoring in the dung the greater 

 part of what had been taken from the soil by the crops, 

 would reduce the losses from his land to a point where 

 they would be more or less balanced by the natural re- 

 cuperative processes at work in the soil. In consequence 

 the level of production was low, and it was the discovery 

 and introduction of artificial fertilisers and feeding 

 stuffs — nitrate of soda, guano, the phosphates, cotton 

 cake, maize, etc., — which enabled the British farmer to 

 raise his output per acre by at least 50 per cent, 

 during the reign of the late Queen. It is true that all 



