Tlie Practical Value of Bung 
have hitherto produced crops of both corn and roots fully better 
than dung. If dunging is partially or wholly left off, the crops 
fall off. Then where is the permanency of dung ? If artificial 
manures containing both phosphates and nitrogen are used, it is 
known on the best possible authority — that of Sir John Lawes 
— that after raore than forty years' trial, neither does the soil 
get poorer nor the crops get worse. Further, dung may be 
applied in very large quantities to all kinds of crops, and 
although the soil becomes richer and richer, the crops never 
increase in proportion, nor yet at all in fact : as the yield of corn 
on dunged land — dunged heavily for forty years — does not in- 
crease. 
People who know least about artificial manures condemn 
them. Many say nitrate of soda is the great criminal charged 
with scourging, wearing out the land, and doing all the evil 
possible in every respect to the land. Can an authentic account 
be really obtained of any farm that has been really injured by 
the judicious use of artificials ? If land becomes poor and full 
of couch, and is dressed with nitrate of soda or such like to 
make a struggling corn-crop grow, what then if the couch 
grows faster than the corn, and such a system is continued ? Is 
the manure to be blamed for making the pest grow ? If the 
farmer fails because the couch succeeds too freely, is it right 
that the manure should have all the blame ? What farmer who 
knows anything much about artificials would use nitrate of soda, 
or ammonia salts, year after year, alone, without phosphates ? 
No one could continue to do so without loss. This ought to be 
the greatest reason for having little fear of the land, as by an 
exhausting process the farmer would injure himself. Neither 
could any one, if he wished to take a farm for a short period to 
exhaust it of latent condition, be able to do so, without loss, 
through moving stock, implements, and all his belongings to a 
new farm, and from it again in two or three years ; therefore, if 
the right system of manuring were not carried out, the crops 
would fall off, so that it really would not pay any man to try to 
continue to wear out the land. Experiments merely continued 
year after year to determine certain points are only guides to 
establish principles, but are not, of course, intended for general 
practice. 
On the opposite page is a summary of the experiments 
carried on at Woburn for ten years, from 1877 to 188G, on the 
continuous growth of wheat by artificials and by dung. 
These estimates are, of course, only approximations, but are as 
nearly right as they could be at the time they were made ; the 
same principle, however, of calculation ai:)plies to all. It is very 
evident that there is much less loss in gi-owing wheat without 
