120 THE FERTILITY OF THE SOIL [CH. 



great altitude the winters are so severe that any 

 kind of farming is attended with risk and difficulty. 



Low-lying moor and peat districts may escai>e 

 these climatic disadvantages and then their reclama- 

 tion becomes simply a matter of soil treatment. 

 Chat Moss in Lancashire affords an instance : it was 

 first drained to remove excess of water and then 

 heavily treated with town refuse from Manchester 

 which enabled it to yield crops. An arrangement of 

 this sort is mutually advantageous to city and country 

 so that the expense can be distributed. But else- 

 where the carriage of bulky extraneous matter 

 becomes too costly to be borne entirely by the 

 reclaimed land, and more concentrated ameliorating 

 agents become necessary. 



The problem has attracted considerable attention 

 in Germany and Sweden and is under investigation 

 at the special experiment stations at Bremen and 

 Jonkoping. Enough has been done to show that 

 treatment with artificial manures leads to profitable 

 crop production, especially of rye, oats and potatoes, 

 on drained land. These crops do not stand in great 

 want of lime, and need only a few hundredweights 

 per acre of potassic, phosphatic and nitrogenous 

 fertilisers. But when it is desired to diversify the 

 agriculture, liming becomes necessary and may prove 

 costly. In some districts Hiltner has successfully 

 solved the problem of growing leguminous crops, 



