CUMULATIVE FERTILITY I 95 



twenty-five to twenty-eight years since it was done. 

 Plenty of it was not worth a shilling an acre formerly. 

 It is magnificent pasture to-day." 



Mr Rutherford holds that the full recognition of 

 compensation for " cumulative fertility " would be the 

 best remedy. The inability of farmers to get allowance 

 for their earlier outlays, however beneficial, has been the 

 great cause of " land sucking " and deterioration, has 

 been thus indirectly one of the main causes of the 

 agricultural depression. 



Mr Ballingall says, " The administration of the Act 

 offers a premium to inferior farming, and acts as a 

 deterrent against high continuous farming. It is grossly 

 unfair, because there is plainly a fertility in some land 

 that will stand for half or more of a long lease, and the 

 tenant gets no more than another man who has only 

 given enough manure to keep the land from poverty." 



Mr Davidson points out that this is not the fault of 

 the Act, but the habit of valuers to include everything 

 under " cast-iron " scales rather than consider the whole 

 circumstances of each case. 



" I see nothing in the x'\ct to prevent an arbiter, in 

 considering that a farm has been well farmed through a 

 sequence of years, from applying an appropriate scale.'' 

 " It is obvious if a farm is in a high condition, and receives 

 in the last years of the lease the same fertilisers in the 

 shape of feeding stuffs, there must be a larger residue ; 

 the crops presumably would draw on the old reserves, 

 and what had since been applied, whereas, if the farm is 

 in low condition, and you only apply sufficient to grow 

 crops in the last years of the lease, less compensation 

 should be given than in the former case." 



Mr Davidson states that he has himself awarded a 

 general compensation for high condition produced by 

 these anterior outlays, and there has not been, though 

 there might have been, appeals. There should be specific 

 outlays proved, and the carrying and productive power 

 of the farm, and the cleanly state in which it is left, would 

 also be considered. 



In the north of England, where leases have more pre- 



