122 THE FERTILITY OF THE SOIL [CH. 



find out till too late the one thing needful. The man 

 had brought his wife and children to see the heavy 

 crop on plots treated with potassic fertiliser alongside 

 of the miserable one on the untreated land. "As he 

 stood looking, first at the corn on the treated and un- 

 treated land, and then at his wife and large family of 

 children, he broke down and cried like a child. Later 

 he explained to the superintendent who was showing 

 him the experiments, that he had put the best of his 

 life into that kind of land. *The land looked rich,' 

 said he — ^ as rich as any land I ever saw. I bought 

 it and drained it and built my home on a sandy knoll. 

 The first crops were fairly good, and we hoped for 

 better crops ; but instead they gi-ew worse and worse. 

 We raised what we could on a small patch of sandy 

 land, and kept trying to find out what we could grow 

 on this black bogus land. Sometimes I helped the 

 neighbours and got a little money, but my wife and 

 I and my older children have wasted twenty years 

 on this land. Poverty, poverty always. How was 

 I to know that this single substance which you call 

 potassium was all we needed to make this land pro- 

 ductive and valuable ? ' " 



The peats can be made productive if the climatic 

 conditions are favourable. The agricultural utilisation 

 of moorland depends mainly on this consideration. 

 Obviously nothing but actual experiment would de- 

 termine what could be accomplished, but at the 



