l^fi Postscript to Paper 



POSTSCRIPT TO PAPER READ AT THE MEETING OP THE BRITISH 

 ASSOCIATION AT CAMBRIDGE, 1904 I — 



It may be advisable to note that my paper has been written from a 

 practical farmer's point of view solely. His efforts should, I suggest, 

 be directed mainly to methods for the most economical production of 

 crops, and the prevention of the diseases to which both crops and 

 animals are liable to suffer from. The discovery of new manurial 

 resources, the question of the application of chemical fertilizers, and 

 the advisability, or inadvisability, of adopting curative methods for 

 plant and animal diseases should be left to the scientific observer. 

 As to the last-named, it is of importance to remember that when all 

 the conditions are favourable to health the diseases of plants and 

 animals exist, as a rule, in a comparatively small degree, and that 

 they only do so to an injurious extent when circumstances are un- 

 favourable. As regards the truth of this rudimentary fact, I have 

 had ample evidence both in the case of my Indian and Clifton-on- 

 Bowmont experiences, where healthy conditions of soil, and general 

 circumstances favourable to health, have shown most marked results 

 as regards the diseases to which animals, plants, potatoes, and turnips 

 are liable. It is of great importance, too, to remember that when, 

 by preventive measures, the farmer spends money in such a way as 

 to reduce losses from diseases, he is certain, as I have previously 

 shown, to get a profitable and permanent return for his outlay, while 

 the return from curative measures is always uncertain, and costly, 

 and is generally of a temporary nature. 



One word more. It is of practical interest to note that the farmers 

 of the Eastern States of America are recruiting their run-out lands, 

 not as farmers are being urged to do here, and are doing to a con- 

 siderable extent, by purchased fertilizers, but by growing leguminous 

 crops, by which, at the smallest cost, the land can be both chemically, 

 and, what is generally of more importance, physically fertilized, and 

 much of the required nitrogen obtained from the atmosphere. In 

 this connection a question of great importance in its immediate and 

 consequential results arises. It is this — if the land by good farming 

 can, with the aid of natural agencies solely, be fully supplied with 

 nitrogen, why should the farmer purchase it ? And if there is no 

 need of his doing so, why should the landlord have to pay, under the 

 Unexhausted Manures Act, for any portion of nitrogen-yielding 

 manures ? It is a remarkable fact that the efforts made by the 

 Legislature, by means of costly experiments with artificial manures, 

 and an Act to protect the purchasers of them, should tend, not to 

 good, but to bad farming of a positively injurious form, to a greater 

 and greater reliance on purchased fertilizers, which must always 

 be uncertain in their action, and often exhaustive to the soil, rather 

 than to a reliance on that slowly-decaying vegetable matter which 

 must yield a certain profit to the farmer, and steadily increase the 

 fertility of the soil. And it is, if possible, still more remarkable that 

 the Government should refuse to give compensation for nitrogen 



