TWO PERIODS IN AGRICULTURAL HISTORY 591 



"No one gifted with common sense will ever permit himself to be persuaded 

 that -our earth has grown old, as man grows old. The sterility of our fields is to 

 be imputed to our doings, because we hand over the cultivation of them to the 

 unreasoning management of ignorant and unskillful slaves." 



-COLUMELLA (first century, A.D.). 



"Some of the leguminous plants manure the soil, according to Saserna, and 

 make it fruitful, whilst other crops exhaust it, and make it barren. Lupines, beans, 

 peas, lentils, and vetches are reported to manure the land. Where no kind of 

 manure is to be had, I think the cultivation of lupines will be found the readiest 

 and best substitute. If they are sown about the middle of September in a poor 

 soil, and then plowed in (when well grown), they will answer as well as the 

 best manure." COLUMELLA. 



"The best forage plants are lucerne (alfalfa), fenugreek, and vetches. Lu- 

 cerne may be placed in the foremost rank of such plants ; for when once sown it 

 lasts ten years, fattens lean cattle, and has a salutary action on sick cattle. It 

 must be carefully weeded at first, lest the weeds choke the tender lucerne." 



COLUMELLA. 



It was in 1859 that Baron von Liebig wrote as follows, regard- 

 ing these and similar ancient teachings: 



"All these rules had, as history tells us, only a temporary effect; they has- 

 tened the decay of Roman agriculture ; and the farmer ultimately found that he 

 had exhausted all his expedients to keep his fields fruitful and reap remunera- 

 tive crops from them. Even in Columella's time, the produce of the land was 

 only fourfold." 



"It is not the land itself that constitutes the farmer's wealth, but it is in the 

 constituents of the soil, which serve for the nutrition of plants, that this wealth 

 truly consists." 



"The deplorable effects of the spoliation system of farming are nowhere 

 more strikingly evident than in America, where the early colonists in Canada, in 

 the state of New York, in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, etc., found tracts 

 of land, which for many years, by simply plowing and sowing, yielded a succes- 

 sion of abundant wheat and tobacco harvests." 



"We all know what has become of those fields. In less than two generations, 

 though originally teeming with fertility, they were turned into deserts, and in 

 many districts brought to a state of such absolute exhaustion, that even now, 

 after having been fallow for more than a hundred years, they will not yield a 

 remunerative crop of a cereal plant." 



"The American farmer despoils his farm without the least attempt at 

 method in the process. When it ceases to yield him sufficiently abundant crops, 

 he simply quits it, and with his seed and plants, betakes himself to a fresh farm; 



