3 2 4 SYSTEMS OF PERMANENT AGRICULTURE 



England imports 200 million bushels of wheat, 100 million bushels 

 of corn, nearly a billion pounds of oil cake, and much phosphate 

 and other fertilizing material; that Germany produces 125 

 million bushels of wheat, and in addition imports 75 million 

 bushels of wheat, 40 million bushels of corn, a billion pounds 

 of oil cake, and much phosphate, etc., and that Germany's chief 

 export is 2 billion pounds of sugar (C^H^Ou); that Den- 

 mark produces 4 million bushels of wheat, imports 5 million 

 bushels of wheat, 15 million bushels of corn, 800 million pounds 

 of oil cake, phosphates, etc., and exports 175 million pounds of 

 butter; that Belgium produces 12 million bushels of wheat and 

 imports 60 million bushels, etc. 



It is interesting also to keep in mind the following statement 1 by 

 Doctor Bernard Dyer in his American lectures on " Results of 

 Investigations on the Rothamsted Soils," in connection with his 

 discussion of the Broadbalk wheat plot that has received an annual 

 application of 15.7 tons of farm manure since 1844: 



" It is to be borne in mind, however, that the quantity of dung used in these 

 continuous wheat -growing experiments is, on the yearly average, far less than 

 would be used in practical agriculture on any of the rotation systems." 



As early as 1855, England was importing annually more than 

 200,000 tons of guano from the west coast of South America and 

 from the islands of the sea. The guanos vary in composition from 

 about 15 per cent of nitrogen and 5 per cent of phosphorus to less 

 than i per cent of nitrogen and more than 1 5 per cent of phosphorus. 



Aikman writes in "Manures and the Principles of Manuring" 

 (1894) as follows concerning the use of bones in England: 



"Employed first in 1774, their use has steadily increased ever since, and their 

 popularity as a phosphatic manure is among farmers in this country quite un- 

 rivaled. . . . Soon their use became so popular that the home supply was found 

 inadequate. . . . So largely were they used by English farmers that Baron Liebig 

 considered it necessary to raise a warning protest against their lavish applica- 

 cation : 'England is robbing all other countries of the condition of their fertility. 

 Already in her eagerness for bones she has turned up the battlefields of Leipzig, 

 of Waterloo, and of the Crimea; already from the catacombs of Sicily has she 

 carried away the skeletons of many successive generations. Annually she 

 recovers from the shores of other countries to her own the manurial equivalent 

 of three millions and a half of men.' " 



1 Page 50, Bulletin 106, Office of Experiment Stations, United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture. 



