At Cockle Park. 123 



manure, excepting some artificials with the turnips, has 

 ever been used since the field was enclosed from the hill 

 about 70 years ago, nor has any cake been fed on the 

 land excepting some very trivial amount given to some 

 rams kept in the field, and a few of the ewes drafted for 

 sale — in fact, the amount of cake used on the whole 

 farm is so small that the agriculturist quoted in my 

 preface considered it to be practically none. But, for 

 the benefit of the uninformed, I must add that it would 

 convey an erroneous impression if I left him under the 

 idea that my field had not been manured, and highly 

 manured, and in a much more lasting form than the 

 artificially-manured land at Cockle Park, on which the 

 sheep experiments were made. For the Inner Kaimrig, 

 as testified by the dark green herbage, has been heavily 

 manured with nitrogen, partly taken from the atmo- 

 sphere, and partly from decaying turf ; while the deep- 

 rooting plants have deeply cultivated the land, bringing 

 up food from depths hitherto untouched, and manufac- 

 turing, by the acids in their roots, inert into active 

 plant food. The humus has played its part, too, by con- 

 verting into active plant food the dormant mineral 

 constituents of the soil. 



From what I have previously shown, it is evident 

 that every experimental farm should be divided into 

 two compartments — the one consisting of exhausted 

 British soil, like that of Cockle Park, and the other 

 of soil brought into a good state of fertility by 

 natural agencies. It could then be ascertained whether 

 it would pay the farmer best to carry on his 

 exhausted soil on the present system, and aided by 

 artificial manures, or whether it would pay better to 

 alter the farming system in the direction of that adopted 

 by me, and reduce his artificial bill to a low ebb, 

 or perhaps abolish it altogether, as I have this year done 

 in the case of one of my turnip crops. It seems obvious 

 .that if agricultural experiments such as I suggest are to 

 be carried out, the present plan of employing what are 



