281 
says, " that a fair comparison would be between the soils of 
Norfolk and the light soils of Lincolnshire." The fertility 
of a soil (e. g. the Kimmeridge clay) cannot be known even by 
its analysis, much less by a stranger passing over a country. 
With regard to the climates of Belgium and England, there 
is very little difference between Brussels and the mean of 
England ; Brussels (a large town) is 4° colder in winter, 3*^ 
warmer in spring, 1.9° warmer in summer, and the tempera^- 
ture of Autumn is equal in both countries. In fine, it is 
not the climate, any more than the natural soil of Belgium, 
which cause their immense produce, but the superior condition 
of the land, made so artificially by repeated manuring : every 
crop with them is heavily manured, except buck- wheat, and 
that too with manure collected at home ; while the English 
farmer (at least not one in a thousand) is unable to collect 
sufficient manure for one-fourth of his farm, viz. the turnip 
crop. As an instance of their heavy manuring, take the Alost 
rotation : — 
1. Potatoes manured with 20 tons of dung per acre. 
2. Wheat „ „ 3 J ditto, and 1800 gallons of urine. 
3. Flax „ „ 12 ditto, 1800 ditto. 
4. Clover „ 20 bushels of wood ashes. 
5. Rye „ „ 8 tons of dung, and 1800 galls, urine. 
6. Oats „ „ 1800 gallons of urine. 
7. Buckwheat „ „ No manure. 
So that here 86 acres* out of the hundred are well manured 
with substances abounding in nitrogen, and that at the least 
expense ; hence follow as the result of this heavy manuring, 
— 1. An earlier harvest ; — 2. An exemption from smut, mil- 
dew, and other diseases of wheat, and the loss of turnips 
from the fly, (almost unknown in Belgium); — 3. A saving 
of one-half in the quantity of seed sown, (the Flemish sow 
* 58 axires average 7i tons of dung and 1800 galls, of urine per acre. 
14 do. average 1800 ditto ditto. 
14 do. average 20 bushels of wood ashes ditto. 
— 86 acres. 
