305 
Variations of the Four-course System. 
therefore, is not open to the charge of discouraging the culti- 
vator from leaving his land in the best possible condition. 
The want of confidence in the broad acres of our country is 
not so much due to agricultural depression and the cycle of low 
prices as to probable or possible political changes, which obscure 
the agricultural horizon. Whatever changes are in store for us, 
we may depend upon this, that the lands of Great Britain will 
continue to be stocked and tilled. 
With one exception, the discussion of Mr. Morris’s paper 
turned chiefly on matters of ancient history. We live, however, 
in the present, and our hopes and aspirations are centred in the 
future. Some of the leading discoveries of the last few years 
had a narrow escape of passing unnoticed. It is now open to 
demonstration that certain plants obtain large quantities of 
nitrogen from the air. Another canon of ancient faith has been 
rudely shaken by the discovery that nitrification proceeds slowly, 
if at all, below a depth of ten inches from the surface. The light 
which has recently been thrown on these subjects will in future 
largely modify our systems of cultivation and manuring, and will 
probably lead to more productive crops. 
Improvements in the cultivation of the soil, and in the breed- 
ing and feeding of live-^tock, were aided and accelerated by the 
introduction and development of the four-course system during 
the long period of two hundred years. Chaiiging circumstances 
necessitate a new departure. Science has proved stronger than 
political economy, and through the aid of steam the virgin 
prairies of the Far West have been requisitioned to supply our 
material wants. The competition from wdiich British Agricul- 
ture has long been suffering appears to intensify rather than 
to decrease. It is small consolation, and a weak argument, to 
adduce that, because the wheat-producing lands of the United 
States have all or nearly all been absorbed by settlers, and that 
in a few years the productive powers of the soil will barely suffice 
to supply the native population, we accept as practically correct 
the contention that the area suited to the gi’owth of wheat is 
incapable of large extension. Will the tillers of the American soil 
long remain content with the meagre average yield of 12 bushels 
per acre ? The men who are leaving these shores and settling on 
the wheat lands of America will in a few years more than double 
the present output. The recent scientific discoveries will be to 
them a boon of which they will not fail to avail themselves. 
The growth of leguminous crops for the collection of free nitrogen, 
and the use of cheap artificial fertilisers, will enable them to 
steadily increase the yield of wheat, which some four centuries 
ago was in England estimated at only nine bushels per acre. I 
