The Best Nursery Lands. 181 
The best and richest farm soils are those which are 
loamy—that is, those which are friable, soft and dark-colored. 
This loamy condition is brought about largely by the ad- 
dition of stable-manures and -green crops. 
Every ordinary soil tends to lose its humus sooner than 
its mineral plant-food, and most so-called exhausted soils 
are injured in their physical condition rather’ than exhausted 
of their fertility. 
It follows, therefore, that the addition of mere plant-food 
eannot entirely restore the generality of worn-out lands. 
The physical condition must always receive first attention. 
The addition of concentrated fertilizers is not a fundamental 
corrective of poor lands in the vast majority of cases. It 
should be considered as a supplement to the treatment of the 
land by means of tillage and cropping. 
If man’s reward from the cultivation of the land is so 
unlike nature’s, it follows that one cannot copy the prac- 
tices of nature in the treatment of the land. Yet, in every 
generation, there are men who proclaim that because nature 
neither plows nor tills, therefore man should not. The only 
infallible guide to the proper treatment of the soil is experi- 
ence, not mere science, nor speculation; but science explains 
the laws and directs the application of them when once ex- 
perience has discovered them. 
In fact, experience is law, for experience that persists is 
that which gives consecutively uniform results under like con- 
ditions. All experience proves that frequent tillage and the 
addition of humus quickly and invariably ameliorate and im- 
prove the soil. It is folly to attempt to controvert the facts 
by mere speculation. On the other hand, experience proves 
that the addition of chemical fertilizers does not invariably 
visibly benefit the soil; therefore, the value of such applica- 
tions must depend upon local or transient conditions. 
ce. The nursery lands.—The best nursery lands, at least in 
New York state, are those which contain much clay. This 
soil is the most easily injured by unwise or careless treat- 
ment and by the loss of organic matter. 
