CHAPTER III. 
SOIL FERTILITY. 
OIL fertility is the power in the soil itself to 
S 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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