234 Suggested Changes of Fanning System. 



decline of fertility, unless, of course, in those cases where a full 

 supply of humus is kept up. 



It may be useful to sum up some of the results yon will certainly 

 obtain from the new proposed system of farming. While your 

 seedsman's bill per annum need not be increased, and may even 

 be lessened, your gains from atmospheric nitrogen will be large and 

 certain. The land will be more easily, and therefore more cheaply, 

 ploughed and worked, while your tillage (by the agency of roots) 

 will be deepened and improved; your weeding bills will be 

 abolished, the success of your clover and grass will be certain, your 

 artificial manure bills may be largely reduced; the supply of 

 humus — in other words, the fertility of the land — instead of 

 decreasing as it has hitherto done, will steadily increase (in some 

 instances, we have trebled the value of the land) ; the expense of 

 handling and rehandling farmyard manure will be saved. All crops 

 will be healthier and better. The health of the stock -mil be much 

 improved, and, as grass is the cheapest food for stock, more luxu- 

 riant pastures will entail less cost in feeding. Lastly, by rejecting 

 ryegrass, you will be discarding a comparatively innutritions grass, 

 and one that suffers much from drought, and leaves little vegetable 

 matter, in favour of the grasses used in the Bank field mixture. 

 Such, then, are the certain results you will obtain from the proposed 

 farming system. As regards finger-and-toe, I cannot speak so 

 confidently. I will only go so far as to say that I have reason to 

 think that, with the aid of healthy conditions of soil, and especially 

 an abundant supply of humus, and interposing, as we do at Clifton- 

 on-Bowmont, a longer period between the last turnip crop of one 

 rotation and the first of another, the risk from diseased turnips 

 will certainly be largely diminished. Though we had some 

 turnip disease in part of a field eight or nine years ago, we 

 have had none since, even though last year there were many 

 complaints of it in the neighbourhood ; and in that year we had 

 a good crop of turnips ou land which had only been limed once, 

 about forty-two years ago, and it had never been manured since, 

 excepting with the artificials put down with the turnips ; but the 

 laud was well supplied with humus, and had lain in grass for a 

 number of years. Should, then, my surmises be correct, we should 

 be able, with the aid of the new farming system, to save the great 

 expense that is often incurred in liming as a temporary preventive 

 or cure for finger-and-toe. 



I now propose to remark on the various values to be derived from 

 humus, or decaying vegetable matter, in the soil, in order to show 

 the great advantage of the proposed system of farming in providing, 

 through the agency of a solid and deeply-rooting turf, the largest 

 quantity of this valuable agent. Humus is that substance which 

 gives value to forest soils, or newly broken-up pasture lands. It is 



