300 CAUSES OF FERTILITY AND STERILITY [chap. 



kainit or other potash salts, all of which are well 

 worked into the surface soil with cultivators and 

 harrows of the disc type before cropping begins. The 

 chalking will have to be repeated in a few years, and 

 the basic slag and potash salts need to be regularly 

 applied, though not in the initial quantities. On a 

 newly reclaimed bog the horses require special shoes 

 or boots with broad flat soles, and the wheeled 

 implements are fitted with wide flat bands in order 

 to enable them to traverse the spongy surface without 

 sinking in. Good crops can be grown cheaply after 

 the initial reclamation, for the land contains an 

 immense reserve of nitrogen. Rye and oats among 

 cereals, potatoes, mangolds, cabbage and kale form the 

 best crops ; the quality, and especially the stiffness 

 of the straw of the cereals, are very dependent upon 

 the incorporation of some mineral soil in the cultivated 

 layer. 



Permanent pastures may be formed by burning 

 over the surface, incorporating the chalk and manures 

 with the burnt ashes by a series of shallow cultivations 

 and sowing the seed mixture, in which alsike clover, 

 trefoil, timothy, and cock's-foot and rye grass should pre- 

 dominate, in the spring without any cover crop. In Ger- 

 many reclamations of the low moors, the wet peaty 

 alluvial deposits near the river mouths are regarded as 

 the most profitable undertakings of this nature, the 

 financial results being in the main dependent upon the 

 cost of the initial drainage. The treatment of the 

 great area of heaths which cover the coarse sandy 

 glacial deposits of Northern Europe follows much 

 the same lines, and can undoubtedly be applied with 

 success to considerable areas in Great Britain, as, for 

 example, to the "brek" land of Norfolk and Suffolk, 

 the Dorset and Cornish heaths, etc. In all these 



