in lime, and these are the first to show evidence
of acidity. In our limestone areas, however, acid soil conditions are
developing year by year, limiting the growth of clover and affecting
the yields of other crops.

The situation is a serious one just in so far as men refuse to
recognize the facts as they exist, and permit the limiting of crop
yields, and consequently of incomes, through the presence of harmful
acids. The natural corrective is lime, which combines with the acid and
leaves the soil friendly to all plant life and especially to the
clovers and other legumes that are necessary to profitable farming.
Nature is largely dependent upon man's assistance in the correction of
soil acidity.

Crop-rotation.--A good crop-rotation favors high productiveness. One
kind of crop paves the way nicely for some other one. The land can be
occupied by living plants without any long intermissions. Organic
matter can be supplied without the use of an undue portion of the time.
The stores of plant-food throughout all the soil are more surely
reached by a variety of plants, differing in their habits of
root-growth. The injury from disease and insects is kept down to a
minimum. There is better distribution of the labor required by the
farm, and neglect of crops at critical times is escaped. The
maintenance of fertility is dependent much upon the use of a legume
that will furnish nitrogen from the air. A permanently successful
agriculture in our country must be based upon the use of legumes, and
crop-rotations would be demanded for this reason alone if none other
existed.

Fertilizers.--When a crop is fed to livestock, and all the manure is
returned to the land that produced the crop without loss by leaching or
fermentation, there is a return to the land of four fifths of the
fertility, and a good form of organic matter is supplied. A portion of
the crops cannot be fed upon the farm, or otherwise the human race
would have only animal products for food. The welfare of the people
demands that a vast amount of the soil's crops be sold from the farms
producing them. This brings about a dependence upon the natural stores
of plant-food in the soil, which become available slowly, and upon
commercial fertilizers.

There has been a disposition on the part of many farmers to regard
fertilizers only as stimulants, due to the irrational use of certain
materials, but a good commercial fertilizer is a carrier of some or all
of the necessa