CALCAREOUS MANURES— THEORY. 25 



be measured by its products after these temporary causes have ceased to 

 act, which will generally take place before the third or fourth crop is ob- 

 tained. According, then, to this definition, a certain degree of permanency 

 in its early productiveness is necessary to entitle a soil to be termed na- 

 turally fertile. It is in this sense th^it I deny to any poor lands, except such 

 as were naturally fertile, the capacity of being made rich by putrescent 

 manures only. 



The foregoing proposition would by many persons be so readily admitted 

 as true, that attempting to prove it would be deemed entirely superfluous. 

 But many others will as strongly deny its truth, and can support their op- 

 position by high agricultural authorities. 



General readers, who may have no connexion with farming, must have 

 gathered from the incidental notices in various literary and descriptive 

 works, that some countries or districts that were noted for their uncommon 

 fertility or barrenness, as far back as any accounts of them have been re- 

 corded, still retain the same general character, through every change of 

 culture, government, and even of races of inhabitants. They know that, 

 for some centuries at least, there has been no change in the strong contrast 

 between the barrenness of Norway, Brandenburg, and the Highlands of 

 Scotland, and the fertility of Flanders, Lombardy and Valencia. Sicily, 

 notwithstanding its government is calculated to discourage industry, and 

 production of every profitable kind, still exhibits that fertility for which it 

 was celebrated two thousand years ago. It seems a necessary inference 

 from the many statements of which these are examples, that the labors of 

 man have been but of little avail in altering, generally or permanently, or in 

 any marked degree, the characters and qualities given to soils by nature. 



Most of our experienced practical cultivators, through a different course, 

 have arrived at the same conclusion. Their practice has taught them the 

 truth of this proposition ; and the opinions thus formed have profitably di- 

 rected their most important operations. They are accustomed to estimate 

 the worth of land by its natural degree of fertility ; and by the same rule 

 they are directed on what soils to bestow their scanty stock of manure, and 

 where to. expect exhausted fields to recover by rest, and their own unas- 

 sisted powers. But, content with knowing the fact, this useful class of farm- 

 ers have never inquired for its cause ; and even their opinions on this subject, 

 as on most others, have not been communicated so as to benefit others. 



But if all literary men, who are not farmers, and all practical cultivators, 

 who seldom read, admitted the truth of my proposition, 4t would avail but 

 little for improving our agricultural operations ; and the only prospect of its 

 being usefully disseminated is through that class of farmers who have re- 

 ceived their first opinions of improving soils from books, and whose subse- 

 quent plans and practices have grown out of those opinions. If poor na- 

 tural soils cannot be durably or profitably improved by putrescent manures, 

 this truth should not only be known, but be kept constantly in view, by 

 every farmer who can hope to improve with success. Yet it is a remarka- 

 ble fact, that the difference in the capacities of soils for receiving improve- 

 ment has not attracted the attention of scientific farmers ; and the doctrine 

 has no direct and positive support from the author of any treatise on agri- 

 culture, European or American, that I have been able to consult. On the 

 contrary, it seems to be considered by all of them, that to collect and apply 

 as much vegetable and anfmal manure as possible, is sufficient to ensure 

 profit to every farmer, and fertility to every soil. They do not tell us that 

 numerous exceptions to that rule will be found, and that many soils of ap- 

 parently good texture, if not incapable of being enriched from the barn- 

 yard, would at least cause more loss than clear profit, by being improved 

 from that source. 



