ECONOMY OF AGRICULTURE. 435 



family. A'c. Thus it is Been how a family can live and thrive 

 on a farm of six acres of moderate land. 



This is a brief detail of one six-acre farm in Flanders, given 

 in order to show what peasant proprietorship is < 1 < > 1 1 > «_r and 

 demonstrating on the side of economy in agriculture, more 

 especially where the soil tilled is owned. Give a man the 

 ownership with a title deed of a Hat rock, and he will convert 

 it into a fruitful field : but give him a ten-years' lease of a well- 

 cultivated farm, and, nine chances to one, he will convert it into 

 a fruitless waste. Wherever ownership vests in the soil in 

 Europe it has stimulated the poor man, or the laborer rather, 

 to work it even to the conveying of earth in'baskets upon the 

 back, far up the mountain side, where Nature had denied a soil, 

 in order to render it fertile and productive of the substantiate 

 of animal nutrition. 



Circumstances which will suggest themselves to the reader 

 make a difference, it is true, between proprietorship in the soil 

 here and ia Flanders. These, however, do not essentially 

 vary the economic bearing of the facts quoted. 



Perhaps there is no department of the economy of agricul- 

 ture where farmers and gardeners suffer so much direct loss 

 as that which pertains to animal excrements and urine. There 

 are very few farms in any country that will produce good 

 crops for any length of time without the application of manure. 

 The farmer in New England is ready to admit that he has no 

 reason to expect a plentiful harvest where he has not made a 

 plentiful use of manure. This being granted, all animal excre- 

 tions are, or should be, regarded as being of too great value to 

 the husbandman to lie suffered to be lost, wasted, or improper- 

 ly employed. After having made such arrangements with ref- 

 erence to savim: them that nothing be lost, the-next important 

 consideration is how to use them, various and unlike as they 

 arc in their qualities, so as to derive the greatest returns in 

 crops for their expenditures. 



This knowledge can only be obtained by experience — the 

 great teacher in terra-culture. In experimenting, the intelli- 

 gent manipulator may derive some aid from the science and art 

 of chemistry, as well as from direct experiment and observa- 

 tion. If the farmer can know what the elements of animal ex- 



