CHAPTEE III. 



SOIL FERTILITY. 



SOIL fertility is the power in the soil itself to 

 produce a good crop under proper condi- 

 tions. Man can neither make nor destroy 

 the land. All that man can do is to make it more 

 or less efficient, according to how he uses it. Two 

 men may take two pieces of soil of equal fertility 

 and get vastly different results; by careful 

 study and experiment we may learn how to 

 take advantage of this fertility; but the real 

 secret of it, Nature has wisely locked up in the 

 soil itself, so that one generation of men cannot 

 really rob the next. It has been said that old- 

 time farmers, of New England particularly, 

 robbed the soil of its fertility, so that their 

 sons have been compelled to abandon the old 

 farms and seek new land in the west, or new 

 occupations in the cities of the country. The 

 real truth is, not that the soil has been robbed 

 of its fertility by the fathers, but that the sons 

 have continued the unenlightened methods of 

 the fathers even after their ineffectualness has 

 been proved. 



Since that land was abandoned it has not 

 really been idle. Nature has been improving it 

 all these years by placing leaves and trees back 



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