16 Lord Leicester's System. 



that it is of much move- importance to teach method 

 than to impart knowledge. And if Locke is to be 

 recommended to the farmer, he is still more to be 

 advised for the use of agricultural chemists, who have, 

 as I have shown in my paper delivered at Cambridge 

 {vide Appendix VII.), led the farmer to most pernicious 

 conclusions, because, as Locke puts it, in his section on 

 'Reasoning," "something was left out which should 

 go into the reckoning to make it just and complete." 



And, besides the danger of misapplying general 

 principles, there are numerous cases where erroneous 

 conclusions are readily come to, as, for instance, that 

 because one seed is cheaper than another it will 

 therefore afford a larger return of grass for the outlay, 

 or that because some of the richest pastures contain 

 certain plants it is therefore most advantageous to 

 sow the seeds of them, or that because you want much 

 clover it is therefore desirable to put down much seed. 

 The whole subject, in short, is a jungle full of traps 

 by which the unwary are only too liable to be caught, 

 and it is therefore important to begin with that attitude 

 of mind, so difficult to attain, which enables the indi- 

 vidual neither to believe, nor, what is of even more 

 importance, disbelieve anything whatever without 

 sound reasons for forming a decisive opinion in one 

 direction or another. 



Since writing this chapter Lord Leicester has been 

 kind enough to inform me, in answer to a letter from 

 me on the subject, that he has no objection to ray 

 publishing a paper on the subject of the system he has 

 adopted, and which, in principle, is exactly the same as 

 the one I have pursued, so far as leaving the land for a 

 certain number of years in grass, and then taking four 

 crops in succession, is concerned. His Lordship's paper 

 is as follows : — 



" As many enquiries are made as to the system I adopt in 

 treating poor lands under temporary pasture, I may state that it 



