KECOKDS OF CHARLEMAGNE. 233 



the soil, is the foundation of rational husbandry, and 

 must, above all things, be kept in view by the practical 

 farmer. He may renounce the hope of making his land 

 more fruitful than it is by nature, but he cannot expect 

 to keep his harvests up to their average if he allows the 

 necessary conditions for them to diminish in his land. 



All those farmers who cherish the notion that the 

 produce of their fields has not declined, have not hither- 

 to been able to appreciate the force of this law. As- 

 suming that they have an excess of nutritive substances 

 to deal with, they think they may continue drawing 

 upon it, until a failure becomes visible, and then they 

 fancy it will be time enough to talk of compensation. 



This view results from want of understanding the 

 nature of their own acts. 



There surely can be no doubt that to manure a field 

 which already contains an excess of nutritive substances 

 is opposed to a rational system of cultivation ; for what 

 end could be gained by increasing the nutritive sub- 

 stances in a field where a portion of the elements already 

 existing cannot, on account of their mass, come into 

 operation ? 



But how can sensible men talk of excess when they 

 are obliged to use manure in order to keep up their 

 harvests, and when their crops decline if they employ 

 no manure ? 



The simple fact, say others, that in certain districts, 

 as in Rhenish Bavaria, agriculture has flourished since 

 the time of the Romans, and that the ground there is 

 just as rich, nay, gives higher crops than in other lands, 

 is a proof how little reason there is to fear want or ex- 

 haustion by continued culture ; for if such a thing were 

 likely, it would make itself manifest there sooner than 

 elsewhere. 



But in the cultivated lands of Europe agriculture 

 is at all events still very young, as we know with the 

 greatest certainty from records of the time of Charle- 

 magne. His ordinances respecting the management 

 of his own estates (capitulare de mills vel curtis im- 

 peratoris), wherein directions are given to the stewards, 



