316 CARMARTHEN AND CO-OPERATION 



phoric acid with the system of farming that has so 

 long prevailed. The staple products that leave the 

 land are young stock that go to England to be 

 fattened, and, on the other hand, milk. Both these 

 products draw to an unusual extent on the phosphoric 

 acid of the soil ; and in both cases the material leaves 

 the land and never comes back again ; so that one 

 may say that for centuries there has been a continuous 

 export of phosphoric acid from the soil of Wales 

 without any replacement, until within very recent years 

 the practice of using basic slag has become more 

 general. Just as fertility has been travelling from 

 Wales, so Norfolk and the other arable counties in 

 England where stock are fattened have been gaining 

 in fertility from the linseed and the maize that are 

 consumed upon them, fertility really drawn from the 

 soil of the new countries in which they are chiefly 

 grown. The Welsh farmer, being, as a rule, a com- 

 paratively small man, with but little superfluous 

 capital, has never been a great buyer of artificial 

 fertilizers, so that his soil in the majority of cases 

 remains in much the same condition as it was half a 

 century ago, and has not experienced the increased 

 fertility due to a more intensive cultivation by the aid 

 of imported manures and feeding stuffs which has 

 characterized the soils farther east. On this farm, 

 however, bone meal has been largely used, as well as 

 basic slag, and has proved as good or even a better 

 manure. Most of the best returns for bone meal seem 

 to be obtained upon comparatively light soils in the 

 West of England; in the East, probably because of the 

 lower rainfall, it often proves so slowly acting as to be 

 an expensive fertilizer. 



The chief corn crops grown upon the farm which 

 we were visiting were wheat and oats wheat to 



