290 On the Maintenance of Fertility in new Arable Land. 
made, to the fields on which during the ensuing year it will be 
used, or to stations near the liquid manure tanks, where it may 
be properly manufactured. About three thousand cubic yards are 
thus annually applied to the green crops. It is not only made 
from the consumption of roots and straw, but large quantities of 
oil-cake, oats, linseed, and beans are also consumed, and these no 
doubt add much to its richness. The annual application of so 
much fertilising matter ensures heavy crops of roots and straw — 
it ensures that, on which the farmer depends for the re-applica- 
tion each year of an equal quantity of manure. The system thus 
maintains itself: it was set a going without much expense, and it 
contains within it the elements of a permanent establishment. 
No doubt in this, as in every other system of cultivation I have 
heard of, the soil suffers an annual abstraction of its substance ; 
but this is not necessarily inconsistent with the maintenance of 
fertility. Dr. Daubeny has shown us that the soil contains, so 
to speak, an exhaustless store of fertilising matter, and all that is 
needed to make this abundance apparent as well as real, is so to 
expose the soil, as that for every abstraction by the growth of a 
crop, a transfer of equal amount may be made by the solvent 
powers of atmospheric agents from the dormant stores within it, 
to those which are immediately available for the use of plants. 
It is upon an abundance of the latter description that the current 
fertility of a soil depends, and this may be maintained in spite of 
the continued robbery occasioned by selling crops, provided the 
balance be made good. Now the efficiency of the system of culti- 
vation adopted at Whitfield, in maintaining fertility notwithstand- 
ing heavy sales of farm produce, may be accounted for in great 
measure by the frequency of fallow crops, whose cultivation is 
attended by such constant and repeated stirrings of the soil, that 
rain-water will have peculiar facilities for acting as a solvent 
upon its substance. In addition to this there must be consi- 
dered, the purchase and consumption of considerable quantities 
of cattle-food, and the preservation of the manure made from it. 
These are the three points to which we must look for the 
maintenance of arable farming. As regards the second, I may 
just state how far the matters annually brought on to this farm go 
to balance the loss it sustains of the matters annually carried off 
it. The account stands thus : — There is an annual abstraction 
from the soil of about 500 cjuarters of wheat — the produce of 
320 acres of land ; and of an amount of beef and mutton equal to 
the increase during five months on 30 to 40 three-year-old oxen, 
and during eight months on 250 to 300 shearling sheep, as well as 
of the substance of some 20 or 30 bacon hogs, bred and fattened 
on the farm ; in addition to this, there has lately been an annual 
sale of about 50 tons of Belgian carrots, and about 40 tons of 
