13 



down when in blossom, and it will improve the soil 

 in proportion to its ability to shelter it. 



Cuthbert W. Johnson says: 



' l An English fanner inadvertently left for some 

 months a door in his fallow field ; for several years 

 alter, th** crops were particularly luxuriant where 

 the door had been lying, so much so that one would 

 have said that some rich manure had been applied 

 to that spot " 



Anderson, an eminent Scotch writer, says, in his 

 Economy oj Manures: 



" Every practical farmer knows, or ought to know, 

 for the facts are constantly before his observation, 

 that land can be made exceedingly fertile without 

 manure. He must have noticed that if *ny portion 

 of the soil has been covered, either accidentally or 

 designedly for sometime, by water, stone, plank, logs, 

 chips, brush, rails, corn stalks, straw, buildings of 

 every description, with hay or straw ricks, leaves or 

 clover, and in fact, that under any and every substance 

 which has covered its surface closely, it (the surface 

 soil) invariably becomes exceedingly fertile, and that 

 the degree of this fertility is totally independent of 

 the covering substance/' 



After reading these remarkable statements of John- 

 son and Anderson, both men of extensive observation 

 and intelligence ; we can more fully credit the experi. 

 ments of Gurney in England, upon his fields of 

 grass. 



Green grass covered with straw gave him in one 

 month 5,870 pounds per acre. The same kind of 

 grass uncovered produced but 2,207 pounds No 

 rain fell during this experiment. Another plot gave 



