144 Food from the Soil 



entirely lost sight of as one moves inland, and are not 

 to be seen anywhere, all across Europe, except in the 

 neighbourhood of salt-springs, yet they do reappear 

 in some parts of Hungary, and in the great plains, or 

 steppes, of south-east Russia, where the soil contains 

 so much salt as to be often encrusted with it in 

 summer. 



Here these plants thrive as well as on the coast, but 

 nothing else will grow, except a few such plants as are 

 nearly related to them ; and in some places it is the 

 custom to cut and remove the whole crop of these 

 every year, by way of improving the soil. The plants 

 have some value in themselves, because they yield soda 

 — common salt being a compound of soda ; but the 

 main object in cutting them is that, by this means, the 

 salt may be gradually removed from the soil, so that 

 other and more useful crops can be grown in it. 



And what is true of the saltworts is true of every 

 crop. That is to say, every crop takes away from the 

 soil, not one mineral substance only, but several, in 

 larger or smaller proportions ; and the soil is to this 

 extent poorer than it was before. If the crop is cut 

 and carried, nearly the whole of what it has taken up 

 is lost to the soil; in the case of turnips and other 

 root-crops, the whole plant is taken away, and the loss 

 is so much the greater. 



A meadow which is mown by a machine, too, loses 

 more than one mown with the scythe, as the machine 

 cuts closer ; and horses are said to take more from a 

 meadow than either sheep or cows, for a similar reason, 

 because they are closer feeders. But where a crop is 

 consumed by animals, it is not all lost to the soil. 

 On the contrary, so much is returned to it in their 



