ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 157 



misleading. It tends to render the reports of agricultural ex- 

 periments useless, because so much depends upon the nature 

 of the soil. Upon some classes of soils you will find great 

 effects from gypsum, but if you were led to purchase gypsum 

 on a large scale because you read of experiments favourable 

 to its use, you might be easily disappointed. It is the com- 

 position of the soil which affects the use of fertilizers more 

 than any other thing, and we ought to use our chemical 

 knowledge in elucidation of this point. If a soil is deficient 

 in lime, it wants lime : and if the soil is found to be deficient 

 in magnesia, or in potash, of course we have an index point- 

 ing the direction in which fertilizing may be of benefit. If a 

 soil is open in texture it is extraordinary how small a pro- 

 portion of a substance will suffice for the requirements of 

 a crop ; but, nevertheless, if a soil is eminently and pointedly 

 deficient in a substance, that is a very good reason for trying 

 that substance. 



But there is another view of the case which is still more 

 important, and that is the great influence which the condition 

 of the land has upon the effect of fertilizers. The condition 

 of the land appears to be almost everything, and the dictum 

 is that the higher the condition of the land the less effect 

 will a fertilizer have upon it. Poverty-stricken land will 

 respond freely to the use of fertilizers, but land which has 

 been long well farmed and well dunged scarcely responds at 

 all, and very frequently gives absolutely a minus result, which 

 is very discouraging indeed. We who have tried experiments 

 for a long series of years, know perfectly well that it is not 

 at all an unusual thing to find three or four hundredweights 

 of superphosphate give less result than is obtained upon 

 an unmanured plot. That does not astonish us at all. It 

 seems to have astonished Sir Thomas Dyke Acland very 

 much, but it does not astonish old experimenters at all when 

 they get a minus result after the application of thoroughly 



