344 On increasing our Supplies of Animal Food. 



The connexion between all these means and the resultant pro- 

 duce of meat is most intimate. It is not merely that the extra 

 manuring- induces the extra crop — the manuring furnishes the very 

 building material out of which the increased produce is made. 

 Those very atoms of nitrogen and of phosphorus you are adding 

 in guano — those very particles of potash and soda you are de- 

 taching from impracticable positions in the soil by the influences 

 which drainage has brought to bear upon them — those very atoms 

 of carbon which your plants, vigorous owing to more thorough 

 cultivation, are extracting from the air in the sunshine, may 

 travel various roads, but they will come to an ultimate residence 

 side by side in the flesh and the blood of the fattening animal. 

 The various additions you make to your soil, the fertility you 

 extract from it, may indeed be said to "occasion" the increased 

 produce of meat which succeeds them, but it is in the same way 

 as the stone and the lime occasion the buildings of which they are 

 the very substance and material. 



There is one topic connected with this branch of our inquiry 

 to which we may usefully refer ; and this is the fact that the pro- 

 cesses of meat-manufacture when once commenced are conserva- 

 tive of their Own continuance through the thus maintained fertility 

 of the soil. The more turnips the more stock and the more 

 meat ; the more stock the more manure ; and the more manure 

 the more turnips again. There is no way of insuring and in- 

 creasing fertility in land more certain of success than that of 

 keeping a large head of stock upon it. Mr. Lawes has satis- 

 factorily illustrated this in the eighth volume of the Society's 

 Journal. The manufacture of meat is not only a thing desirable 

 on its own account, but it is the very method of all others to 

 insure a larger produce of everything else. There is no cheaper 

 way of supplying the soil with the material which is to feed the 

 wheat plant as well as the turnip, than that of feeding a certain 

 quantity of meat upon the land, and applying the manure made 

 meanwhile. 



So certain is this truth that we may safely quote Mr. Lawes 

 when he says of the farmer, that k<r so long as a due relation be- 

 tween his production of meat and export of corn were maintained, 

 there would be no fear of an exhaustion of the soil, even if he 

 grew no green crops whatever." We need not follow the technical 

 argument urged in proof and illustration of this opinion. It is 

 sufficient to appeal to all agricultural experience on the subject. 

 Other things being equal, the greater the produce of meat upon 

 a farm, the greater also, in general, will be the produce of corn. 



Increased fertility, then, not only lays the only sure foundation 

 for an increase in the produce of meat, but is itself augmented by 

 the very processes of the manufacture to which it gives rise. 



