248 Postscript to Paper. 



chasers of them, should tend, not to good, but to bad farming of a 

 positively injurious form, to a greater and greater reliance on pur- 

 chased 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 stored in the vegetable 

 matter while it grants compensation for the unexhausted residues 

 of artificial manures and cake fed to animals on the land. 



It must be remembered that if the fertilizer bill can be cut down 

 on some farms by the adoption of my system of farming this 

 reduction will be more than made up to the manure merchant by 

 the largely increased demand for artificials for the turnip crops of 

 the land which will be again brought under cultivation when my 

 system becomes general — land at present abandoned to worthless 

 pasture, because it would not pay to cultivate it on the old farming 

 system. When the system spreads more widely it seems to me clear 

 that much down and more lands may be cultivated on the Clifton 

 Park system. 



It may be pointed out lastly that besides the required seed-testing 

 station, and an act to compel seedsmen to guarantee the seeds they 

 sell, an act is urgently required in order to keep spurious, diseased, 

 and adulterated seeds out of the country. In America the Custom 

 House officers take samples of all lots of seeds at the ports of 

 arrival, and forward them to Washington for examination, and the 

 seeds are at once allowed to pass on to their destination, but if the 

 seeds are bad, or do not come up to a certain standard of quality, 

 the names of buyer and seller are published, and thus public 

 warning is given as to the holders of bad seeds. As farmers here 

 are quite unprotected in this matter, spurious seeds, diseased seeds, 

 and seeds mingled with weed seeds are imported without any 

 restriction. It is hardly necessary to add that, unless farmers are 

 aided in their work as the farmers in other civilised countries are, it 

 will be hopeless to expect any rapid progress towards amending the 

 present depressed agricultural situation. 



