4J.8 EARLIEST OPINIONS OF SOILS. 



to bestow upon and share my lights with all my neighbours and 

 other farmers whom my then humble position and secluded life 

 permitted me to meet. This disposition also caused my earliest 

 attempt at writing for even so small a portion of the public as con- 

 stituted a little agricultural society of which I had induced the 

 establishment in my neighbourhood. To show my earliest opinions 

 and statements on this subject, I will here quote the material part 

 of a communication made to that society, and which was written 

 in October of the year of my first experiment in 1818. I copy 

 the extract just as it then stood, and with all its defects of form 

 and of substance. I then shrunk in fear from the greater publicity 

 which the press would have afforded} and had not the remotest 

 anticipation that my first effort, then made, would lead me to the 

 extended intercourse since established and maintained with the 

 public, both by writing and printing. 



* * * * " We should be induced to infer from the remarks of 

 those writers who have treated on the improvement of land, that a 

 soil artificially enriched is equally valuable with one which would 

 produce the same amount of crop from its natural fertility ; and 

 that a soil originally good, but impoverished by injudicious cultiva- 

 tion, is no better than if it never had been rich. If this conclusion 

 be just (and the contrary has not been even hinted by them), it is 

 in direct contradiction to the opinion of many intelligent practical 

 farmers, with whom my own observations concur, in pronouncing 

 that soils naturally rich (although completely worn out), will sooner 

 recover by rest can be enriched with less manure and will longer 

 resist the effects of the severest course of cropping, than soils of as 

 good apparent texture and constitution, and in similar situations, 

 but poor before they were brought into cultivation. Should the 

 latter opinion be correct, it is of the utmost importance that the 

 subject should be investigated; as the only conclusion that can be 

 drawn from it is, that such land must have some secret defect in its 

 constitution, some principle adverse to improvement ; and until this 

 is discovered and corrected, it is an almost hopeless undertaking to 

 make a barren country permanently fertile, by means of animal and 

 vegetable manure. 



" That enclosing* has but little effect in improving land naturally 

 "barren, is sufficiently proved by poor wood-land. This has had the 

 benefit of enclosing for perhaps thousands of years, and is yet 

 miserably poor. It may be said that leaves are not to be compared 

 in value to grass or weeds ; but surely leaves ought to improve as 

 much in a thousand years, as grass or weeds in twenty. Besides, 

 it is well known, that leaves taken from this very land, and applied 

 elsewhere, have produced much benefit; and the advocates of en- 



* The non-grazing system, or manuring land by its own growth. 



