ing but fine flour,
meat, butter, etc., there is probably enough to last a million years,
and you and I need not trouble ourselves with speculations as to what
will happen after that time. Nearly all our soils are practically
inexhaustible. But of course these elements are not in an available
condition. If they were, the rains would wash them all into the ocean.
They are rendered available by a kind of fermentation. A manure-heap
packed as hard and solid as a rock would not decay; but break it up,
make it fine, turn it occasionally so as to expose it to the atmosphere,
and with the proper degree of moisture and heat it will ferment rapidly,
and all its elements will soon become available food for plants. Nothing
has been created by the process. It was all there. We have simply made
it _available_. So it is with the soil. Break it up, make it fine, turn
it occasionally, expose it to the atmosphere, and the elements it
contains become available.

I do not think that Mr. Geddes' land is any better, naturally, than
yours or mine. We can all raise fair crops by cultivating the land
thoroughly, and by never allowing a weed to grow. On Mr. Lawes'
experimental wheat-field, the plot that has never received a particle of
manure, produces _every year_ an average of about 15 bushels per acre.
And the whole crop is removed--grain, straw, and chaff. Nothing is
returned. And that the land is not remarkably rich, is evident from the
fact that some of the farms in the neighborhood, produce, under the
ordinary system of management, but little more wheat, once in four or
five years than is raised _every year_ on this experimental plot without
any manure.

Why? Because these farmers do not half work their land, and the manure
they make is little better than rotten straw. Mr. Lawes' wheat-field is
plowed twice every year, and when I was there, the crop was hand-hoed
two or three times in the spring. Not a weed is suffered to grow. And
this is all there is to it.

Now, of course, instead of raising 15 bushels of wheat every year, it is
a good deal better to raise a crop of 30 bushels every other year, and
still better to raise 45 bushels every third year. And it is here that
clover comes to our aid. It will enable us to do this very thing, and
the land runs no greater risk of exhaustion than Mr. Lawes' unmanured
wheat crop.

Mr. Geddes and I do not differ as much as you suppose. In fact, I do not
believe that we differ at all. He has