UPPER INDIA. 27 



by crops, and by using it as fuel all its organic, vegetable, or 

 volatile constituents, are lost for the time, and only its mineral 

 or non-volatile constituents remain available as manure. 



Cattle-dung acts beneficially in two ways. Firstly, by sup- 

 plying the manurial substances required and taken up by crops 

 during their growth ; and secondly, by improving the physical 

 texture or condition of the soil, by which is meant its per- 

 meability to air and water. The loss by burning, as before 

 stated, is the organic, vegetable, or volatile matter its woody, 

 and vegetable fibre and tissue which, by incorporation with 

 the soil, would have improved its physical texture or condition, 

 have made it more open and porous, and more pervious to air 

 and water, from which it would have had an increased power 

 of abstracting fertilizing matters. 



Liebig held the opinion that as long as the ashes of plants 

 were returned to the soil, there was no necessity for returning 

 to the soil the organic or volatile parts, provided the physical 

 condition of the soil were perfect. 



When a soil is rich in the mineral ingredients required by 

 crops, it is probable that improving the texture of the soil by 

 breaking it up deeply will be of more immediate benefit to the 

 crops grown on it than an application of manure combined 

 with shallow cultivation, and this deep cultivation of the soil 

 might cause increased crops for years, but eventually a diminu- 

 tion of fertility would ensue from the abstraction from the soil 

 of the mineral food of plants. What is really required is a com- 

 bination of deep cultivation and the use of manure. Dung is 

 now epigrammatically described as food minus growth. Food 

 gains nothing by passing through the body of an animal ; on the 

 contrary, it passes through a course of fermentation, during 

 which it undergoes a loss to the extent of its constituents 

 taken up for the formation of the structure and increase 

 of the body, and to make up for daily waste of tissue, and 



