118 Ea'perhnents ivith Hay and Potato Crops 



ameliorate the fertility of the soil, even in the most 

 favourable seasons, but, unless supported by dung or the 

 turf, must deplete the soil. To the agriculturist who 

 has what Locke terms " Large, sound, roundabout 

 sense," the preceding statements are, of course, mere 

 truisms ; but as there are many of my readers who, to 

 use Locke's words again, " have not a full view of all 

 that relates to the question, and may be of moment to 

 decide it," it is advisable to refer them to the state- 

 ments I have made as regards the crops grown 

 without manure, and also to allude to some facts with 

 reference to the experiments made at Cockle Park County 

 Demonstration Farm. These, as we have seen, are made 

 on the assumption that the British farmer has done, and 

 continues to do, all he can for himself, and that it only 

 remains for the chemist to show him how, by the appli- 

 cation of artificial manures, he may derive increased 

 crops from exhausted soil. If the assumption is correct 

 then the results of the experiments are valuable to the 

 farmer, but the assumption, as I have abundantly 

 shown at Clifton-on-Bowmont, is not correct, and the 

 experiments are really only of value to show the farmer 

 how, with the present low price for agricultural produce, 

 he may lose his money if, after having adopted my 

 system and manured his land with turf, he choses to add 

 artificial manures. The experiments made at Cockle 

 Park, in order to stimulate the seed hay crop with 

 various manures from a cost of 13s to 36s per acre, show 

 results which, as compared with my results from turf- 

 manured land, are distinctly inferior, so that the farmer 

 working on my system would have lost the value of the 

 artificial manures had he used them. When I pass to 

 the potato experiments at the College, as shown in its 

 seventh annual Report, the results are still more striking. 

 As shown in my paper delivered at Cambridge, Aug., 

 1904, I last year produced, without any manure other 

 than turf, 13 tons 14 cwt. of potatoes per acre. With 

 the aid of 12 tons dung and 65 cwt. artificials, costing 



