31 6 



Cultivation by Deep-rooting Plants. 



dressed with various mixtures of fertilisers, and the results 

 are published. But the conclusions thus arrived at are 

 calculated to mislead rather than to enlighten the farmer, for 

 though the results from the various mixtures used may be 

 a guide in favour of using one rather than another in the 

 case of an exhausted soil, we have under the method of 

 research adopted no test as to whether it would pay to use 

 any one of the mixtures, seeing that the standard for com- 

 parison in the r< No Manure " plot is so low. Plot No. i to 

 furnish a true standard for comparison ought to have con- 

 sisted of land which had been tilled, drained, aerated, and 

 manured to its lowest depth with tap-rooted plants like 

 chicory and burnet, and furnished with abundant supplies of 

 leguminosa^ and of grasses with large and deep root systems. 

 A five-year-old turf from such a composition of plants 

 should have been ploughed up, and well mixed with the 

 soil underneath, you would then have that standard for com- 

 parison which the farmer can and should supply, which is 

 the necessary basis of all sound agriculture, and, I need 

 hardly say, the basis that the chemical experimenter should 

 start with when testing his prescriptions for applying either 

 to pasture or arable lands. This is the standard I have 

 formed on my Clifton-on-Bowmont farm.* Let us glance at 

 some of the results from it, and afterwards compare them 

 with the results obtained from the experiments carried out by 

 the Durham College of Science. 



The Clifton-on-Bowmont Farm is about a mile from the 

 small town of Yetholm, which contains three inns and a 

 considerable number of lodgings, the place being rather 

 a favourite summer and autumn resort. The town lies in 



[*In his work, "Agricultural Changes and Laying Land down to Grass" (J. and J. II. 

 Rutherford, Kelso, price 2s. 6d.), Mr. Elliot, describes his system as follows : 

 "The system, as the reader will have seen, is an extremely simple one. It consists 

 of creating, with the agency of large-rooting and deep-rooting plants, a good sod, 

 and then relying on it for the mammal (excepting the turnip manure) and physical 

 conditions necessary for growing two green and two cereal crops, after which the 

 land is again laid down to grass, and the creation of a good sod again commenced. 

 But I must warn the reader, as I have elsewhere done, that this cannot be effected 

 with the aid of grass mixtures commonly used in rotation husbandry, as with these 

 from six to eight years would be required to form a sod, and even then that would be 

 far inferior to the sod which can be produced in four, or even three, years, with the 

 aid of the mixture I have found to be most efficacious.'' — Ed.] 



