THEORY AND PRACTICE. 73 



otherwise perish : and herein lies the chief and wise 

 application of all carbonaceous or bulky manure. 

 Rightly, then, so far as their knowledge went, 

 did our forefathers, who knew nothing of Turnip 

 culture, plough-in their long manure before winter : 

 a poor practice at best, we say, to put manure in im- 

 mediate contact with a grain crop : but not more 

 poor than to apply to a green spring-crop under 

 the burning sun of June the treasures of the Farm- 

 yard whose spirit is exhaled before the body is 

 buried, and whose body is not rotted time enough 

 to aiford its remnant of inorganic food to the crop it 

 is applied to. 



Who can wonder, then, that the ' artificials ' should 

 sometimes beat the long manure, for Spring applica- 

 tion? And who can doubt that we wise moderns 

 have left half our lesson unlearnt, in having changed 

 the time of manuring without changing also the con- 

 dition of the manure ? 



An experiment, whose object was to test the com- 

 parative merits of the Ancient and the Modern 

 Fallow, seemed to some people almost unmeaning. 

 The superiority of a green crop over no crop at all, 

 providing that the land is dry enough in the winter 

 for eating or carting it off when grown, was one of 



