236 



On the Apj)licatioR of Manures. 



storing to the earth that fertility of which it has thus been de- 

 prived. 



It is in fact a substitute for the method of fallowing, which 

 constitutes the first step in an artificial system of culture ; and it 

 seems probable that the early colonists in the old world may 

 have been led to introduce this latter practice, from having ob- 

 served that soil which had become unfruitful in consequence of 

 excessive cropping gradually resumed its pristine productiveness 

 when abandoned for some time to itself. 



For although in the first ages of the Vv orld the colonists may 

 have adopted the same custom which we find now prevalent in 

 America, and may have pushed farther and farther into the wil- 

 derness in proportion as the land already in their possession be- 

 came exhausted, yet it is evident that the period for such unre- 

 strained emigration would have long passed away, at the time 

 when, as history informs us, the Pelasgi emigrated into Italy, 

 the Egyptians under Danaus established themselves in the Mo- 

 rea, and the Israelites took possession of the Holy Land. 



In all these cases the colonists were not only destitute of those 

 facilities for moving to great distances which steam navigation 

 and the other improvements of modern times afford to the set- 

 tler in the United States, but were circumscribed in their move- 

 ments by the hostile tribes that hemmed them in, Vv^hich, if some- 

 what lower in the scale of ci\ilization than themselves, were at 

 least not so utterly unable to cope with them in the arts of war 

 as the wild Indian of the present day finds himself, under or- 

 dinary circumstances, to be with the back- woodsman of European 

 extraction. 



Hence, being more generally obliged to remain stationary 

 upon the spot in Avhich they had at first established themselves, 

 the colonists of old would soon be driven to resort to a system 

 of fallowing, in order to give back to the land a portion of 

 that fertility of which their mode of culture had in the first in- 

 stance deprived it. 



Accordingly we find in the Hebrew law every seventh year 

 set apart as a period of entire rest, — a command, it is observed, 

 grounded, not only on religious, but also on political and civil 

 considerations, with the view, that is, of preventing the soil from 

 being worn out by continual tillage. 



That which in the Mosaic dispensation had been enjoined as a 

 religious duty was adopted also in the early times of Greece and 

 Rome from motives of expediency. 



Even so late as the time of Virgil it seems to have been the 

 practice to allow the arable land to lie fallow every alternate year. 

 *' Alternis igitur tonsas cessare novales, 

 Et segnem patiere situ durescere campum." 



