374: APPENDIX H. 



the trees on a forest plot, sell the timber, grub up, plough and till 

 the ground, and then proceed to dispose of the productive power 

 of the new soil, in three cereal crops, obtained without the least 

 supply of manure ; or we may possibly assist in accelerating the 

 exhaustion of the ground by a small dose of guano. All that this 

 course of proceeding is calculated to accomplish is, that we have 

 now to distribute the manure hitherto produced on our estate over 

 a somewhat more extended surface than formerly. When the Jap- 

 anese husbandman breaks up a plot of ground, he finds a virgin 

 soil, the productive power of which he has not the least intention 

 of impairing. He therefore, from the very outset, takes care to 

 establish a proper balance between crop and manure, expenditure 

 and income, maintaining thus intact the productive power of the 

 ground, which is all that can reasonably be attempted by any ra- 

 tional husbandman (' Annul, der Preuss. Landwirthschaft,' Janu- 

 ary, 1862). 



APPENDIX H (page 237). 



"We would earnestly recommend all inquiring travellers in 

 other parts of the world, to endeavour to ascertain, above all 

 things, what are the proportions of the annual produce of the 

 various cereals and cultivated plants raised in a continued succes- 

 sion of crops on unmanured soil of different kinds in the same 

 place, and under the climatic influences of widely differing degrees 

 of latitude. In so far as the author has been able to obtain re- 

 liable information on the matter, from various countries, more 

 especially from the torrid zone, a careful examination of the facts 

 ascertained would appear to refute everywhere the old wide- 

 spread error that a very fruitful soil, under favourable climatic 

 conditions, in the tropics for instance, will continue inexhaustible, 

 even without receiving back from the hand of man the mineral 

 matters removed in the crops. Even in the most enchanting lands 

 of the tropical zone, on the most fruitful volcanic earth, such as is 

 found in the old country of the Incas, tlie tableland of Quito, 

 Imbabura, Eiobamba, Cuenca, &c., a long-continued succession 

 of crops drained the soil wherever it was impracticable to convey 

 to the fields by artificial irrigation the mud carried down by the 

 torrents of the Andes. In those regions water, aided by the wide- 

 spread old volcanic mud streams (Lodozales), plays the part, 

 which guano and farm-yard manure do elsewhere, of restoring to 

 the soil the mineral constituents removed by a continued succes- 

 sion of crops. In most of the provinces of Persia, more especi; lly 

 in Aserbeidschan and in a great portion of Armenia and Asia 

 Minor, the irrigation canals everywhere met with serve the pur- 



