OF ARTIFICIAL MANURES. 



151 



strongly as may be necessary for attaining the maxi- 

 mum of result. 



As long a^ a farm has not reached the highest 

 point of cultivation^ every means must be pronounced 

 acceptable, which puts the farmer in a position to 

 provide his fields with more liberal dressing than 

 he is able to give them from his own supply of 

 home-produced natural manure. Whoever seeks to 

 arrive quickly at this state of cultivation must make 

 extensive use of those auxiliary or artificial manures, 

 that are now offered to him by commerce. 



As long as these powerful agents for increasing 

 the productiveness of land were unknown, an advan- 

 tageous alternation of crops was indeed the only 

 means of insuring a large yield from the farm, — and 

 this leads slowly yet surely to the result ; now, on 

 the contrary, it is in the farmer's power, by buying 

 additional manures, to attain his object with far 

 greater rapidity. A Saxon agriculturist, who has 

 made many practical experiments in relation to this 

 point, expresses himself in the following terms : — 

 " The more extended employment of artificial ma- 

 nures is an advance in farming, that has already 

 opened up a new era. By this means the business 

 of a farmer is becoming more closely approximated 

 than formerly to that of a manufacturer. For whilst 

 formerly our farming arrangements were conducted 

 in the manner which the quality of manure pro- 

 duced on the farm itself prescribed, we are now free 

 to cultivate, as may seem most profitable, every 



