Preface to Third Edition. xv 



remaining fertility of the soil. When, some 

 months ago, I told a very old and experienced 

 practical farming friend that I purposed to grow 

 a fine crop of turnips without the aid of any 

 manure he laughed in my face, and evidently 

 thought the assertion the best joke he had heard 

 for some time; yet this has been done, and on 

 land that never has had any farmyard manure, and 

 the previous turnips of which had only received 

 some artificials. With reference to the successful 

 growing of crops without any other manure ex- 

 cepting that of a turf grown on the spot, and 

 consisting of deeply-rooting plants, combined with 

 a full supply of the leguminosse, the correspondent 

 previously quoted writes as follows : — 



" There is one point which always strikes me, as also many 

 others, when visiting Clifton from time to time, and that is the 

 remarkable fact of seeing such crops from year to year [the 

 farm has now been in the proprietor's hands for 17 years] when 

 so much breeding stock is raised and sold off the place, and so 

 little feeding stuff consumed — practically none. I know of no 

 other secondary arable farm in this country farmed on the old 

 system, and sown down every year with ordinary grass mixtures, 

 that would continue to grow paying crops unless a very great 

 amount ot cake-fed manure, or other artificials, were applied to 

 the turnip break every year. Even valuable old pastures quickly 

 degenerate where a breeding stock, or young animals, are kept 

 without extra cake feeding. Looking at these facts, it is all the 

 more remarkable how much your system and scientific seeding 

 has accomplished on poor high land such as Clifton-on-Bowmont. 

 Your Wonderful success in growing potatoes also raises the 

 question of how much might be made from that valuable crop 

 through cheap production by natural means, and practically no 



