AGRICULTURAL VALUE OF. 6£1 



employs all their labour. Whenever, therefore, a vineyard is 

 grown outside the natural zone of the vine, it is an unjustifiable 

 intruder, which can make no possible claim for external support, 

 — in other cases, however, vineyards require forest litter and can 

 only with difficulty dispense with this assistance. The culti- 

 vation of tobacco, beet-root for sugar and other similar crops 

 not used for household consumption, and intensive market- 

 gardening, are similarly situated. 



Indolence, obstinacy, blind attachment to long usage and 

 want of receptivity for good advice on the part of a peasantry 

 are the greatest hindrances to success in agriculture. Farmers 

 find it easier to claim assistance from forests than to obtain 

 Avhat their land requires by their own exertions : they are not 

 sufficiently ready to improve their farms — by increasing the area 

 of good meadow-land ; growing green fodder-crops ; deep ijlough- 

 ing ; changing the rotation of their crops ; reducing an excessive 

 stock of cattle, which may at present yield them much 

 manure but of bad quality ; making better dung-heaps ; saving 

 liquid manure, also by a more extensive use of artificial manure 

 and of substitutes for straw. Among the latter are — material 

 obtained from swampy meadows (rushes, reeds and coarse 

 herbage) ; sawdust, which is produced in enormous quantity at 

 saw-mills ; forest weeds, and finally, peat-litter* which may be 

 obtained almost everywhere and has proved extremely useful, 

 and wood-Avool which is very cheap in Germany. 



Several means are thus at the disposal of the farmer for 

 improving his position, without using forest litter, which 

 he has hitherto considered indispensable. It is, however, 

 difficult to teach him improved farming, except by the stress 

 of necessity ; this hard master should therefore be employed to 

 his own advantage and that of the forest, whenever he indolently 

 wastes his own resources and tries to live on the ruin of forests. 



Forest litter is not necessary, and should always be refused, 

 Avhen farms show signs of wasteful management. This waste is 

 chiefly shewn when stall-manure is wastefully collected and used, 

 and its liquid parts allowed to drain away. The forester is 

 always justified in enquiring whether the cultivator has done his 



* [Largely nscii in London stahles. being imported from Holland. Vide ch. iv. 

 part iii. of the present book.— Ti;.] 



