152 IMPORTANCE AND VALUE 



plant which is suited to the soil. Yea, still more ; 

 we can produce, as it were with a single effort, fine 

 harvests from worn-out and poorly manured land ; — 

 we can in such a case secure in two or three years 

 the same results for which formerly ten or twelve 

 years were required." The farmer should avail him- 

 self of artificial manures : — 



1. To render new land speedily productive ; 



2. To improve quickly the condition of land al- 

 ready much exhausted ; 



3. To raise fertile land to the maximum of pro- 

 ductiveness in general attainable, or, what is the 

 same thing, to make the occupation of farming as 

 intensive as possible ; 



4. To be able to command uninterruptedly the 

 most profitable rotation of crops in a pecuniary point 

 of view ; 



5. To strengthen and reinvigorate poor and back- 

 ward sowings, or such as have been hurt by the se- 

 verity of winter ; 



6. To obtain in the shortest possible time a more 

 abundant production of natural manure. 



The last observation will more especially comfort 

 those farmers who have hitherto imagined that arti- 

 ficial are about to supplant natural manures ; a sup- 

 position which will of course be seen to be untenable, 

 when it is considered that the former, when they have 

 rendered proper service, will rather displace themselves 

 and make their own employment uncalled for. For if 

 by the agency of artificial manures fields are speedily 



