Suggested Changes of Farming System. 233 



nutritive value as white clover. Sinclair gives no analysis of the 

 kidney vetch. According to Dr. Stebler, in his " The Best Forage 

 Plants," the proportion of nutritive matter contained in kidney 

 vetch is greater than in red clover hay of medium quality. After 

 enumerating thirteen grasses as being those -which contain the 

 most nutritive matter, Sinclair observes that "perennial ryegrass 

 ranks with those that contain the least." It is not uninteresting to 

 note that the opinions of the practical hay farmer, the analyst, 

 and the horses all agree — ^the last so decidedly that they prefer 

 the Bank field hay to oats — i.e., they will leave the latter to eat 

 the former. 



The seventh weak point of the present farming system is that, in 

 consequence of the absence of vegetable matter in the soil, the 

 waste on all slopes is serious, and the downward waste of manurial 

 matters is also very considerable. When the land is well stored 

 with decaying turf the waste is entirely averted, and the downward 

 percolation of the water is attended with no loss, or only a trifling 

 one of nitrogen, as it is retained by the humus. 



The eighth weak point in the present farming system is the 

 exhaustion it entails on the soil, and of this I have heard frequent 

 mention for many years past, besides having a large personal experi- 

 ence in the matter. Perhaps the most decisive evidence on the point 

 is contained in the resolutions passed at the first great meeting of 

 400 Aberdeenshire farmers at the beginning of the bad times, when 

 they attributed their diflSculties to dear labour, bad seasons, and the 

 exhaustion of the soil. The last statement proves what must now 

 be evident to everyone, and that is that the present farming is a 

 system not for maintaining and improving, but for continuously 

 lessening, the fertility of the soil. But though the soil has been 

 thus exhausted from a practical point of view, it has not been so 

 from a chemical point of view. It has only been exhausted of its 

 vegetable matter. Speaking generally of most soils, a sufficiency 

 of mineral constituents are still there to last for the crops of a great 

 many years, but these remain inert in consequence of the exhaustion 

 of the humus ; and perhaps the most valuable and encouraging 

 point connected with my experiments at Clifton-on-Bowmont lies 

 in the fact that it has been clearly proved that old worn-out lands 

 that have been cropped for sixty or seventy years, and never 

 manured, will produce as good, and even better, crops than they 

 ever did if only you replace the vegetable matter which these soils 

 contained when first enclosed from the hill. Misfortunes are pro- 

 verbially said never to come single, and I may here notice that just 

 as prices fell the Scotch farmer found himself tilling soils more 

 exhausted than they ever had been, owing, as I have shown, to a 

 system of agriculture which certainly tends to a yearly-increasing 



