The Best Nursery Lands. 181 



The best and richest farm soils are those which are 

 loamy that is, those which are friable, soft and dark-colored. 

 This loamy condition is brought about largely by the ad- 

 dition of stable -manures and green crops. 



Every ordinary soil tends to lose its humus sooner than 

 its mineral plant-food, and most so-called exhausted soils 

 are injured in their physical condition rather than exhausted 

 of their fertility. 



It follows, therefore, that the addition of mere plant-food 

 cannot entirely restore the generality of worn-out lands. 

 The physical condition must always receive first attention. 

 The addition of concentrated fertilizers is not a fundamental 

 corrective of poor lands in the vast majority of cases. It 

 should be considered as a supplement to the treatment of the 

 land by means of tillage and cropping. 



If man's reward from the cultivation of the laud is so 

 unlike nature's, it follows that one cannot copy the prac- 

 tices of nature in the treatment of the land. Yet, in every 

 generation, there are men who proclaim that because nature 

 neither plows nor tills, therefore man should not. The only 

 infallible guide to the proper treatment of the soil is experi- 

 ence, not mere science, nor speculation ; but science explains 

 the laws and directs the application of them when once ex- 

 perience has discovered them. 



In fact, experience is law, for experience that persists is 

 that which gives consecutively uniform results under like con- 

 ditions. All experience proves that frequent tillage and the 

 addition of humus quickly and invariably ameliorate and im- 

 prove the soil. It is folly to attempt to controvert the facts 

 by mere speculation. On the other hand, experience proves 

 that the addition of chemical fertilizers does not invariably 

 visibly benefit the soil ; therefore, the value of such applica- 

 tions must depend upon local or transient conditions. 



c. Tlie nursery lands. The best nursery lands, at least in 

 New York state, are those which contain much clay. This 

 soil is the most easily injured by unwise or careless treat- 

 ment and by the loss of organic matter. 



