Cultivation by Deep-rooting Plants. 



315 



restore to the land that decaying vegetable matter and that 

 physical condition of soil which are the indispensable basis 

 of all successful agriculture. 



Just as the planters cleared the forest lands and gradually 

 exhausted their store of decaying vegetable matter, so did 

 the farmers in this country enclose pasture lands and cultivate 

 them in such a way that their humus gradually declined, and 

 all those consequential evils arose from which our agricul- 

 turists are now suffering. Then the farmer went to the 

 chemist and, at his suggestion, bought manures which ought 

 to have been, and can be, grown, supplied, and manufactured 

 into plant food gratis on the farm ; and remedies for plant 

 diseases which would either never have arisen or would 

 have existed only to a small extent, had the soil been 

 continuously kept in a healthy condition by a proper admix- 

 ture of decaying vegetable matter. But in spite of, and 

 often partly in consequence of, the remedies applied, agricul- 

 tural conditions generally are not improving, much of the 

 soil of Great Britain is in a deplorably impoverished state, 

 the crops are less able to withstand the inclemencies of the 

 seasons, and there are more and more complaints of disease 

 in turnips and of clover-sick soils, while sometimes, as is 

 the case this year, there is an almost complete failure of 

 clover over large tracts of country, a failure which, as I 

 shall afterwards try to show, need never have occurred had 

 our agricultural system been soundly founded. To grapple 

 with these evils the farmer is being taught to rely on costl}- 

 fertilisers which, should the season be a bad one, must end 

 in loss, or in expensive cures for diseases and insect attacks,, 

 which must again and again recur till healthy conditions of 

 soil are provided. 



It seems to be generally believed that all that is required 

 to meet existing conditions is to show the farmer bj experi- 

 ments and demonstration how his production may be further 

 increased with the aid of purchased fertilisers. To prove to 

 the farmer how this may best be done a field is taken in hand 

 which has been undergoing the ordinary exhaustive course 

 of British agriculture and divided into a number of plots. 

 Plot No. 1 is marked " No Manure/' and the other plots are 



