Preface to Third Edition. 



regards cropping, and I am highly pleased with the results so 

 far, as I never had turnips do so well, and the system saves 

 certainly 30 per cent, in labour and manure. By another year I 

 hope to work much more of my land on your system.'' 



But the system, which is now widely known as 

 the Clifton Park system, will do much more than 

 produce the effects so forcibly pointed out by my 

 correspondent. It will arrest the steady decad- 

 ence of all British arable soils. For the last thirty 

 years I haA'e had them through my hands on a 

 large scale, from alluvial flats up to thin soil 800 

 feet above the level of the sea, and find an only 

 too ample confirmation of the general complaint 

 of practical farmers. At the first great meeting of 

 400 Aberdeenshire farmers, held more than twenty 

 years ago, exhaustion of the soil was declared to be 

 one of the greatest causes of their difficulties. In 

 the course of discussion with ten leading farmers 

 at Clifton-onBowmont last year all seemed to 

 agree in thinking that the soil had declined owing 

 to the exhaustion of organic, or vegetable, matter. 

 With the aid of liming, and a freer and freer use 

 of artificial manures, the decadence thus caused is 

 steadily continuing. And the farmer expects that 

 foreign competition may be met by ever augment- 

 ing bills for purchased fertilizers, which will cause 

 the soil still further to decline in fertility, while 

 the agricultural chemist, aided by the manure 

 merchant, is emptying his pockets, and at the 

 same time enabling the farmer to run out the 



