16 
Report on the Agriculture of Belgium, 
reason, however, why so much trouble is taken with both solid 
and liquid manure, and why so much time and labour are 
spent in its management, is simply that the small farmer has 
an excessive dislike to buying anything; and, mistaking bulk for 
quality, his argument is, " the more manure 1 can make, the less 
guano I shall want to buy." 
Guano is used to a large extent, especially in the sandy districts ; 
but throughout Belgium there seemed to be a prevailing igno- 
rance of the value and uses of bones, superphosphates, nitrate 
of soda, and artificial manures generally. Speaking generally, 
the light soils of Belgium, like most sandy soils, are naturally 
very poor in phosphoric acid, so largely required for the forma- 
tion of grain ; and as phosphatic manures are rarely applied, and 
natural manure is made in the great majority of cases by ill- 
fed animals, we were not surprised to observe the comparative 
poverty of grain, and luxuriance of straw in the corn crops. 
A farmer is regarded as good or bad precisely in proportion 
to the quantity of manure he can apply to his crops ; and the 
money-value of natural fertilisers is placed very high, in conse- 
quence of the demand being so much in excess of the supply. 
Farmyard manure will sell readily at from 85. to lOs. per ton ; 
and one sagacious farmer, somewhat dubious as to the value of 
the liquid manure from his cowhouse, sold it to his neighbours 
at the rate of eight gallons for a penny. There is, however, no 
classification in this matter, and manure from cows fed on soup, 
clover, and grass, would sell for quite as much as that from 
feeding beasts, even if they were given a large quantity of linseed- 
cake. 
The heaviest dressing of manure is habitually given for 
potatoes, generally 20 tons per acre, and sometimes the quantity 
is increased to 25 tons. The succeeding crop of wheat gets 
little or no manure. Both the rye and the oats which follow, 
one after the other, get a half-dressing (10 tons to the acre), and 
the clover is well watered with liquid manure. On light land, 
after clover, flax is not manured, the succeeding white crops get 
a half-dressing, and the buckwheat following is grown without 
manure. When farmyard manure runs short its place is supplied 
by guano, or by night-soil from the large towns. 
5. Rotation of Crops. — The mode of culture pursued on all 
the farms of the light-land district is very much the same, 
although occasionlly, as in the Campine, they may range up to 
50 or 60 acres. Therefore in the following remarks on the 
rotation of crops it must be remembered that they are applicable 
only to the zone coloured yellow on our map. Most writers on 
Flemish husbandry have given numerous examples of the 
rotation of crops, and some have attempted to explain the prin- 
