168 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
As was naturally to be expected, the results of these experiments 
made upon poor land are very different from those of a great number 
of field experiments that have been made in Europe. It is not al- 
ways that the needs of a given soil are indicated as clearly as in this 
instance. In the records of scientific agriculture there may be found 
the details of many experiments in which the plots of unmanured 
land yielded as good crops or almost as good as those that had been 
heavily dressed with all kinds of fertilizers; and this to all appear- 
ance, not because of excessive drought or wetness, but because of the 
original fertility of the land. It seems often to be the case upon 
European fields that this particular condition (natural fertility) is in 
excess, so to speak, of the other conditions that are essential for the 
successful growth of crops. Such experiments illustrate very clearly 
the great differences which subsist between the agriculture of those 
countries and that of our own. It is plain that upon the rich Euro- 
pean farms comparatively little thought is bestowed upon the natural 
strength of the soil. But with us, where land is cheap and abundant, 
it is inevitable, and it is proper, that the farmer should endeavor to 
derive the utmost possible advantage from the matters naturally 
contained in his land. It may be said, indeed, speaking in general 
terms and of the generality of instances, as they exist in this region, © 
that that man will be the best farmer who knows how to use the 
natural force of his land most fully, without injuring or in any way 
weakening it, and who, if need be, can, slowly perhaps, but with con- 
stant profit to himself, increase the original fertility until it is in 
complete accord with the other conditions and circumstances by which 
the profits of the farm are limited and controlled. But in many of 
the better parts of Europe the case is different. There the problem 
for the farmer to solve might almost be said to be :— given standing- 
room, how to get the largest possible yield from the land? And the 
more costly and fertile the land happens to be, so much the stronger 
would seem to be the tendency to manure it heavily, and to employ 
the most concentrated manures, with the view of obtaining a little 
larger return than could otherwise be got from the great reservoir 
of plant-food, which the land must of itself be considered to be. 
Such practices depend, of course, in good part, upon various social, 
economic, and political considerations with which the chemist has 
no particular concern; but from a cosmopolitan point of view, it 
