RESULTS OF FARM-YARD MANURING. 223 



he now includes in his rotation lucerne and sainfoin, 

 whose still longer and more widely spreading roots 

 enable them to reach yet deeper layers of the ground 

 than the red clover ; until finally he employs the yel- 

 low lupine, which may truly be called the ' hunger- 

 plant.' 



A new increase of produce is the result of these ' im- 

 provements ' in his system of cultivation by farm-yard 

 manuring, which the farmer looks upon as a great ad- 

 vance. A fresh store of nutritive substances, brought 

 up from the deeper layers of the soil, may possibly ac- 

 cumulate again in the arable surface soil ; but these 

 deeper layers also will be gradually exhausted, and the 

 accumulated store in the arable surface soil will also be 

 consumed. 



This is the natural termination of cultivation l)y the 

 system of farm-yard manuring. 



The fields of the Saxon experiments afford very fair 

 illustrations of the different conditions to which arable 

 land in general is brought, by a pure system of farm- 

 yard manuring. 



The field at Cunnersdorf is in the first stage, the 

 Mausegast field in the second, the fields at Kotitz and 

 Oberbobritzsch in the third stage, of cultivation by 

 farm-yard manuring, to which we have referred. 



At Cunnersdorf the arable soil exhausted by the 

 preceding cultivation becomes with every new rotation 

 richer in the conditions required for the production of 

 grain ; not only does the clover replace the loss sus- 

 tained by the removal of the corn-crops, but a remark- 

 able excess of all nutritive substances will gradually 

 accumulate in the arable soil ; and, after a series of 

 years, with the same system of cultivation by farm-yard 

 manuring, the field will be brought to the condition of 

 the land at Mausegast ; which means, that the arable 

 soil will acquire a high productive power for corn and 

 other crops, while the produce of clover will decrease. 

 The fields at Kotitz and Oberbobritzsch most probably 

 were in former times in the same condition as the Mau- 

 segast field is .at present ; not that they ever yielded 



