On the Maintenance of Fertility in new Arable Land. 285 
need for imagining any mystery in this matter, as one is apt to do 
in cases, as in agriculture, where the unknoAvn principle of life is 
concerned — this failure in the productiveness of a soil, doubtless 
occurs just in the same way as does that of a tile-mill or a cotton- 
factory, to which the raw material has been supplied in dimi- 
nished quantity or of inferior quality. The fertility of the soil 
will be perfectly restored by replacing its texture and composition 
in their original condition. These are the two essential elements 
of its agricultural character. The latter is of the same obvious 
and immediate importance to vegetable growth that the furnish- 
ing of its food-store is to an animal ; for on the composition of 
the soil depends the supply of nutriment to the plant. The 
former exerts an influence in several ways. On the texture of a 
soil depends its suitableness for the growth of different crops — 
light soils being adapted to one class of plants, and heavy soils to 
another. It is on this also there will for the most part depend 
rapidity of vegetable growth, for to it is due the facility with 
which rain-water falling on the surface of the land dissolves 
its soluble portions out, and carries them to the roots of the 
plants. And, lastly, it is to the texture of the soil that that free 
access of air and of rain-water to every part of it is due, to the 
chemical processes connected with which so much of agricultural 
fertility must be referred. And it is this aspect of the matter which 
connects it with the subject of the present paper. Dr. Daubeny 
pointed out, in the last number of the Journal, that independently 
of the small quantity of vegetable food, so to speak, available for 
use at any one time, an immense store resides in most soils in a 
dormant condition, capable of gradual development as it is re- 
quired, and this process of development may by various artificial 
means, as by fallowing, the cultivation of fallow crops, the ap- 
plication of lime, &c., be greatly accelerated. It thus appears 
that there is hope for almost any soil — that in few cases can land 
be so " run out/' as to require the direct supply of all the sub- 
stances which are needed to create fertility, for many of them are 
already present, and it only requires a little skilful management 
to exhibit them. It is on the same ground that we must explain 
the practice, often to be seen, of allowing worn-out land to " rest" 
for a while, after a long period of mismanagement has exhausted 
its fertility. The success of this expedient, however, does not 
justify the practice, which is obviously most wasteful both of time 
and of means. The amount of "active" fertility in the soil, 
ought, by a judicious system of cropping and of consumption on 
the farm, to be made nearly to reproduce itself year by year; and 
the gradual development of that which lies " dormant," instead of 
acting as a sinking-fund to wipe out the evils of past mismanage- 
X 2 
