Hints on Vegetable and Fruit Farming. 
71 
the range of their roots, their capacity for taking up nitric acid 
from the soil is very different. 
8. The recognised exhausting character of corn crops is 
largely due to the limited season of their active growth, and the 
long period during which the land is bare, or there is little 
growth, and so subject to loss of nitric acid by drainage. 
9. When salts of ammonium, or nitrates, are applied as manure, 
the chief, if not the only unexhausted residue of nitrogen left 
within the soil available for future crops, is that in the increased 
roots and other residues of the crops ; and this is only slowly 
available. 
10. When oilcakes or other foods are consumed by stock, 
the formation of nitric acid from the manure produced is slower, 
but continues longer than when salts of ammonium are used. 
When there is a liberal use of animal-manures, an accumulation 
of nitrogenous and mineral matter takes place in the soil, and 
such accumulation is known under the term " condition." 
Under such circumstances the fertility of the soil is maintained, 
or it may even be considerably increased. 
II. — Hints on Vegetable and Fruit Farming* By Chakles 
Whitehead, F.L.S., F.G.S., of Barming House, Maidstone. 
The problem of the Future of Farming appears difficult of solu- 
tion. Some alarmists hold that the British farmer's occupation 
is gone ; while others believe that the situation merely necessi- 
tates a change of system, and that if he energetically levels up 
his practice to meet altered circumstances, he may still have a 
profitable business. There are clear-headed men, gifted with 
an intuitive faculty of perception, and whose judgments are 
unaffected by panic, who say that corn-farming, pure and 
simple, will again pay in this country where the conditions are 
suitable, especially if some unfair burdens are removed from land, 
as they undoubtedly will be now that they have been so clearly 
set forth and brought prominently under the notice of the 
country and the Legislature. Every one knows that the wretched 
state of agriculturists during the last three years has been mainly 
caused by a cycle of wet seasons, which has happened before, 
and will happen again in due meteorological order. Most of 
the produce was of inferior quality during this cycle, and 
realised lower prices on account, in a degree, of the importation 
of the products of other countries, to the great advantage of the 
consumers. But this by no means is to be the normal state of 
our agriculture. Cycles of fine weather again will bring cycles 
• This paper has been published by the Society as a pamphlet, price 1«. 
