SOILS NATURALLY RICH OR POOR. 41 



temporary causes have ceased to act, which will generally take place 

 before the third or fourth crop is obtained. According, then, to 

 this definition, a certain degree of permanency in its early produc- 

 tiveness is necessary to entitle a soil to be termed naturally fertile. 

 It is in this sense that I deny to any poor lands, except such as 

 were naturally fertile, the capacity of being made rich by putres- 

 cent manures only. 



The foregoing proposition would by many persons be so readily 

 admitted as true, that attempting to prove it would be deemed 

 entirely superfluous. But many others will as strongly deny its 

 truth, and can support their opposition by high agricultural 

 authorities. 



General readers, who may have no connexion with farming, must 

 have gathered from the incidental notices in various literary and 

 descriptive works, that some, countries or districts that were noted 

 for their uncommon . fertility or barrenness as far back as any 

 accounts of them have been recorded, still retain the same general 

 character, through every change of culture, government, and even 

 of races of inhabitants. They know that, for some centuries at 

 least, there has been no change in the strong contrast between the 

 barrenness of Norway, Brandenburg, and the Highlands of Scot- 

 land, and the fertility of Flanders, Lombardy, and Valencia. Sicily, 

 notwithstanding its government is calculated to discourage* in 

 dustry, and production 6f every profitable kind, still exhibits that 

 fertility for which it was celebrated two thousand years ago. It 

 leems a necessary inference from the many statements of which 

 these are examples, that the labours of man have been but of little 

 avail in altering, generally or permanently, or in any marked de- 

 gree, the characters and qualities given to soils by nature. 



Most of our experienced practical cultivators, through a different 

 course, have arrived at the same conclusion. Their practice has 

 taught them the truth of this proposition ; and the opinions thus 

 formed have profitably directed their most important operations. 

 They are accustomed to estimate the worth of land by its natural 

 (1 >gree of fertility : and by the same rule they are directed on what 

 soiiS to bestow their scanty stock of manure, and where to expect 

 exhausted fields to recover by rest, and their own unassisted powers. 

 But, content with knowing the i:ict., this useful class of farmers 

 have never inquired for. its cause ; and even their opinions on this, 

 as on most other subjects, have not been communicated so as to 

 benefit other cultivators. 



But if all literary men, who are not farmers, and all practical 

 cultivators, who seldom read, admitted the truth of my proposition, 

 it would avail but little for improving our agricultural operations; 

 and the only prospect of its being usefully disseminated is through 

 that class of farmers who have received their first opinions of im- 

 4* 



