12 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



and the overcoming of obstacles can only be brought about 

 by invention, investigation and discovery. 



Now, if we turn from manufactures, where many other 

 specific illustrations might be brought up, to the agricultural 

 industry, we shall find that that occupation is no exception 

 to the general rule ; that, if we are to have progress, we 

 must overcome the difficulties and obstacles which have 

 stood in the way of the development of that industry in the 

 past. 



For the purpose of bringing out a little more clearly the 

 history of agriculture, I have been accustomed to divide 

 it into three periods, which we may consider as tolerably 

 well marked. Not that we can definitely fix upon any one 

 year as marking the dividing line between one period and 

 another, but each of these three periods has peculiar char- 

 acteristics which distinguish it from the others. The first 

 covers the period of original soil fertility ; the second is the 

 period of soil exhaustion ; the third is the period of reno- 

 vation. 



Now, in each of these there are a number of things to be 

 considered. First, take the period of original soil fertility. 

 In the history of any agricultural country there is a time, 

 before the soil becomes impoverished, when the accumula- 

 tions of plant food that have been stored up in the ground 

 for ages appear to be inexhaustible, and no system of agri- 

 culture is required to secure abundant crops. The soil has 

 only, as it has been said, to be " tickled with a stick, and it 

 will laugh in a harvest." What is the result of this condi- 

 tion of things? It is that the systems of agriculture, or 

 rather the methods of agriculture (there is no system) , are 

 very crude, very wasteful. What was the use of being 

 careful to store plant food in the soil, so long as it was 

 considered inexhaustible? There is the great fallacy that 

 has existed during the period of original soil fertility in all 

 countries, and this country is no exception. Every country 

 has passed through this same period, when the idea has 

 prevailed that the fertility of the soil was inexhaustible ; 

 that is, that the soil is full of plant food, that it can never be 

 materially diminished, and all that the farmer has to do 

 is to plough, sow the seed, and reap the harvest. If we look 



