OF AGRICULTURE. 121 



ing is superior to the old three-fields system of 

 our ancestors. Science seldom guided them, 

 and sometimes misguided as was the case with 

 Liebig's theories, developed to the extreme by 

 his followers, who induced us to treat plants 

 as glass recipients of chemical drugs, and who 

 forgot that the only science capable of dealing 

 with life and growth is physiology, not chemistry. 

 Science seldom has guided them : they pro- 

 ceeded in the empirical way ; but, like the 

 cattle-growers who opened new horizons to 

 biology, they have opened a new field of 

 experimental research for the physiology of 

 plants. They have created a totally new 

 agriculture. They smile when we boast about 

 the rotation system, having permitted us to 

 take from the field one crop every year, or four 

 crops each three years, because their ambition 

 is to have six and nine crops from the very 

 same plot of land during the twelve months. 

 They do not understand our talk about good 

 and bad soils, because they make the soil them- 

 selves, and make it in such quantities as to be 

 compelled yearly to sell some of it : otherwise 

 it would raise up the level of their gardens by 

 half an inch every year. They aim at cropping, 

 not five or six tons of grass on the acre, as we 

 do, but from 50 to 100 tons of various vege- 

 tables on the same space ; not 5 worth of hay 



