PREFACE 



rilHE following pages contain the substance of 

 talks, lectures and other discourses delivered 

 before all sorts and conditions of men and women 

 and in all kinds of meeting places. Sometimes 

 the listeners were labourers and allotment holders 

 gathered by the schoolmaster at the close of the 

 day in the biggest room of the village inn, or in the 

 adult school on Sunday morning ; sometimes they 

 were the more polite but not more interested culti- 

 vators of suburban gardens ; others were farmers 

 assembled in the market town on market day ; others 

 again were professed and serious students of agri- 

 cultural science. But all had this in common: that 

 they were really keenly interested in the soil they 

 were cultivating, and wanted to know something 

 more about it. It is for such readers that this little 

 book is intended. 



E. J. R 



HARPENDEN, 



July 1913. 



