WHY WE DIE. 



95 



it could support many thousand times as many people as it does 

 now. 



Even in England now where the soil is turned to account, wheat 

 l3v more intensive tillage yields 27 bushels to the acre against 

 16 in North America. But it was found by Lawes and Gilbert 

 that whereas land which had remained without manure for 20 

 years had a residual fertility of 13 bushels to the acre, land that 

 received an ordinary dressing of manure yielded 30 bushels to the 

 acre ; and if the additional production be availed of to feed more 

 cattle, it is manifest that, with the application of the resulting manure, 

 an increase of five or ten bushels will be obtained at the end of the 

 next four years' rotation of crops, and at the end of the second rota- 

 tion another such increase at compound interest, and so on until 

 55 or 60 bushels of corn is reached. But the soil if further enriched 

 would be too rank, you will say. Not if, instead of stirring it to a 

 depth of five or even seven inches, you stir it to one, two, and even 

 three feet as haa been done. It was my privilege — in his very old 

 age — to visit Sir Arthur Cotton, the first great English irrigator, who 

 had made the region round the lower Godavery river support ten 

 times the population that it had supported before ; and upon 

 retiring to Dorking he had the soil of his little estate analysed and 

 valued, and it was found to be worth 15 per cent, less than the 

 average for the district ; yet when I visited him, it had for upwards 

 of twenty years yielded enormous crops, the success being due to no 

 special manuring but entirely to deep digging, his practice being 

 to dig down three feet and then turn the two upper spits (or foot 

 depths) completely over, and the lowest over upon itself. At my 

 first visit, in early spring. Sir Arthur drove his stick straight down 

 into the bare soil imtil it was buried to the crook ; at my second 

 visit, in summer, I counted the stalks of two or three plants of wheat, 

 and upon each there were upwards of 100, while in a tiny barn 

 stacked with other huge plants I counted upon one 104 ears, while 

 in each ear there were at least 40 grains, as I proved. This would 

 make one grain to be the parent in one generation of 4160 grains. 

 But it must be borne in mind that Sir Arthur's practice was to sow 

 the grains in clumps at even distances apart, three grains going to 

 every clump, and later to remove the two weaker plants, leaving the 

 choicest one, which makes the multiplication 1386f ; and further, 



