815. Liquid manure. Urine gives better result when 

 it is applied in the fresh state than when it is allowed to fer- 

 ment. But being too rich it should be diluted with 10 or 20 

 times as much water, or applied before preparing the land for 

 a crop. If it has to be stored for sometime before use, the 

 addition of I part of sulphate of iron to, 2,000 parts of 

 urine stored, is recommended, both for sanitary reasons, and 

 for preventing fermentation, 



CHAPTER LXXXVI1. 



EXHAUSTION, RECUPERATION AND ABSORPTION. 



\~\ 7HETHER cropping without sufficient manuring has been 

 steadily exhausting Indian soils or not, has been usually 

 answered by experts in undoubted affirmative. Professor 

 Wallace of Edinburgh University, however, says, " Temporary 

 fertility, the qualities possessed in virtue of some accumulation 

 of material useful to plant, may be dissipated, but when this 

 is gone, no system of cropping can reduce the land to a 

 lower point. The greater portion of the land in India which 

 is not newly broken in, annually produces its minimum yield. 

 Where declining fertility has been recorded, it was no doubt 

 due to loss of temporary fertility which had accumulated 

 during a period of rest. " Professor Wallace assumes as 

 a practical agriculturist,, without any proof, that the natural 

 fertility of soils differs, and that this can never be exhausted. 

 We can dismiss from consideration silica, iron, alumina, mag- 

 nesia, soda, lime and even potash, as being abundantly pre- 

 sent in every soil for thousands of crops. But the case is 

 different with Phosphoric acid and Nitrogen. That soils may 



