THE SOIL NOT INEXHAUSTIBLE. 237 



amount of the crop to be expected is calculated from 

 the height of the water of the Nile ; and in the East 

 Indies a famine is the inevitable consequence whenever 

 there happens to be no inundation. 



Nature herself, in these striking instances, points 

 out to man the proper course of proceeding for keeping 

 up the productiveness of the land. (See Appendix H.) 



The notion of our ignorant practical husbandmen, 

 that the soil contains ample store of the elements of food 

 to enable them to pursue their system of agriculture, is 

 due partly to the excellent quality of the land, but also 

 to their skill in robbing it. The man who attempts to 

 gain money by filing the weight of one gold piece from 

 a thousand, cannot plead, in extenuation, that it is re- 

 marked by no one, but if discovered he is punished by 

 the law ; for everybody knows that the fraudulent act, 

 repeated a thousand times, would ultimately leave 

 nothing of the gold pieces. A similar law, from which, 

 moreover, there is no escape, punishes the agriculturist 

 who would make us believe that he knows the exact 

 store of available food elements in his land, and how far 

 it will go ; and who deceives himself when he fancies 

 he is enriching his field by bestowing on the arable sur- 

 face soil the matters taken from the deeper layers. 



There is another class of agriciilturists consisting of 

 men with a small stock of knowledge joined to a limited 

 understanding, who, indeed, fully recognise the law of 

 restitution, but interpret it after their own fashion. 

 They assert and teach that part of the law only, and 

 not the whole, applies to cultivated fields ; that certain 

 constituents, unquestionably, must be restored to the 

 soil to keep up its productiveness, but that all the others 

 are found in the earth in inexhaustible quantities. They 

 generally base their opinion upon some unmeaning 

 chemical analysis, and demonstrate to the simple agri- 

 culturist (for whom alone such disquisitions are intend- 

 ed) how rich his fields still are in some one or other of 

 the mineral constituents, and for how many hundred 

 thousand crops the store will still suffice ; as if it could 

 be of the least use for any one to know what the soil 



