Experiences up to the end of October, 1904. 153 



Success of the System as regards Turnip Disease. — While I never 

 remember to have heard such numerous complaints as regards this in 

 the district there is not a sign of it at Clifton-on-Bowmont, and our 

 turnips (about 70 acres in three fields in different parts of the farm) 

 have looked most healthy throughout, and one of the fields has not 

 been limed within the last forty years. While not denying that this 

 disease may be propagated, even when good soil conditions exist, I 

 am satisfied that, as in the case of man and animals, healthy 

 surroundings will keep off disease, or reduce it to a minimum, even 

 when the season is most favourable to its appearance. In the case 

 of the Clifton-on-Bowmont fields there was an ample supply of 

 vegetable matter from ploughed-down turf, and the whole soil was 

 thus admirably calculated to withstand vicissitudes of weather. 

 And that favourable soil conditions are of the utmost importance as 

 regards the diseases to which turnips are liable, we have excellent 

 confirmation in the case of the Crow Wood field, on the Linton farm, 

 which was once in my hands. This I found, on a careful analysis, 

 had less than i per cent, of lime in the first nine inches of the soil, and 

 it has not been limed within about the last fifty years. I was urged 

 to lime the field, but refused to do so, as I could hear of no turnip 

 disease. The farm was let about thirteen years ago, and the tenant 

 informs me that on the part of the field which consists of a fine 

 sandy loam there is practically no disease— perhaps a turnip here or 

 there ; while on another part of the field, where the soil was of a 

 different character, the disease had in former years made its appear- 

 ance, but was checked by an application of lime. But, as we have 

 seen, the disease practically has been non-existent on the sandy 

 portion of the field, though it contained so little lime that agricultural 

 chemists tell us that crops, under such low lime conditions, cannot 

 be profitably grown. Good physical conditions, then, whether in the 

 case of a soil well permeated with vegetable matter, or in the case 

 of a sandy loam of equally good conditions, being favourable to the 

 health of the plant, seem equally unfavourable to turnip disease. 

 Large sums are spent in heavily liming land for no other reason 

 than because it is a preventive to turnip disease. But from my long 

 experience on this estate I am strongly of opinion that all the money 

 spent on remedies or preventives might be saved were the land well 

 stored with turf in various stages of decay. My experience in the 

 case of my Indian coffee plantations strongly confirms this view. As 

 long as our soils were stored with the vegetable matter of the 

 primeval forest all diseases to which our coffee was liable only existed 

 to a trivial extent, but as the land became exhausted of its vegetable 

 matter, and our soils thus lost physical condition, such diseases 

 much increased. They can, however, be again reduced if the soil is 

 dressed with applications of top soil taken from forest lands. I am 

 now applying the same treatment to my coffee that I am to the 

 Clifton-on-Bowmont farm — i.e., applications of vegetable matter in 

 various stages of decay, through the medium of jungle top soil in the 

 former case and turf in the latter. Since writing the preceding 



