178 A TREATISE ON THE CONNECTION OF 



and probably at a still more distant period, causes equally 

 efficient operated in England against improving the whole 

 of the surface. Our forefathers, therefore, aded more 

 wisely, by the application of the whole of the dung, to 

 bring part of the land into a high state of cultivation, 

 than If they had divided or applied it over the whole 

 -extent of the farms they cultivated, wheiTce little benefit 

 should have accrued to themselves or to posterity : where- 

 as, by bringing certain portions only, into a high state of 

 fertility, a stock of materials has been accumulated, and 

 left for their descendants to work upon, capable of repay- 

 ing to the exhausted outfield lands, with abundant inte- 

 Test, the vegetable matters originally borrowed. 



Poor lands, made highly fertile in former times, by 

 the addition of dung, vegetable, and animal mat- 

 ters, have received such a mechanical arrangement 

 of their jjarts, as well as chemical qualities, tliat they 

 never can return again to their original state. They 

 may, as far as the producflion of grain is concerned, 

 be exhausted for a time by injudicious cropping; yet 

 ihey will always produce grass when not overrun by 



hurt- 



