Norwich bulletin., 1913-03-01

cardIng them utterly. I simply don't know, yet.
 One thing is certain: the subject is not one for dogmatism. One of the western writers whose letters inter- eSted me so much makes the fiat footed assertion that the promiscu- ous and general use of commercial fertilizers seems to him little less than calamitous'' He asks:
 "Is it possible that within a few short years the whole scheme of creation may be overturned by the poVerished that profitable crops can not be grown? It seems to the writer preposterous. Plants have been growing on this good earth since early in the geological ages. Shall man come along and with his refined meth ods of cultivation extract from the soil so much of the natural elements that plants can no longer be grown successfully ?'
 But that isn't a fair statement of the situation
 i It is true that this good earth has been growing plants for. untold ages. Weeds and bushes and trees have grown wild on plain and mountain. taking some of their food out of the dirt and some of it out of the rain water and some of it out of the air. They have grown and died and fallen
 
 where they grew Not only have they thus returned to the soil every single minutest atom that they ever took from it, they have also returned an appreciable amount of solid matter Winnowed by them out of air and wa ter and fixed in a new form. To do just that is one of their fundamental functions, In other words. their growth has taken absolutely nothing from the soil for keeps" but has Tac Ia Fl ad n 66CaV more than was borrowed. Now. man comes along with his refined meth ods of cultivation as noted. He grows eorn and wheat and potatoes instead away from the land forever all that the corn, wheat and potato plants soaks up from it and made into tubers or, grains. The wild plants borrow something from the soil .and, later, return it in full, with big interest add ed.-interest earned from the air and the rains. Mans cultivate plants borrow likewise. but, before they can decay and return their loan with in terest MT. Farmer steps in and takes the, larger half of what they've bor- rowed and sells it off the farm.
 Is it fair to the land. is it reason able, to suppose that the original fund thus annually depleted, shall, nevertheless, remain intact? In no sother case does any human being dream of taking a part from the whole and still leaving the whole as big as before: The thing is manifestly i'm possible on it's face And practice shows that it is in fact, as impossible as it seems in theory.
 # we keep dipping water out of a pail the pail will snreely grow empty. If we keep taking plant-food out of the dirt the dirt will surely be of plant food. sometime Of course the reservoir of the soil is bigger and takes longer to empty than tibles It has a limit in area and very narrow limit in depth. Our farms, for plant growing purposes, aren't 5000 miles through. They're just about two feet deep. And there isn't such an awful lot of plant food in the top two feet of an acre.
 What we take away we've got to replace, in some shape, if we expect 1 to keep on taking. That's about as Which brings us back to the real prac- hcal question: How and with what are we going to replace what we remoVe2 It must be something 1 which will keep the capital of our soil bank intact: it must be something l which won't cost us as much as it returns to us. or where would be our profit?
 There was a time when it was hoped that chemistry would give us ! absolutely definite rules for this. The hope hasn't materialized. Chemistry | has given us some mighty helpful 1 hints, and put some mighty useful 1 new tools in our hands. But the | problem remains, in it's final essence, 1 about where 1t always was, in the i hands of the individual farmer to l settle. lie must answer the question, | each for himself and for each different l field and each different crop.
 The only adequate knowledge we can get of what our farms want is f oy asking them; by testing and ex- 1 eerimennng, and that not for one 1 season only for a series of years
 The longer l work dirt the firmer
 awz - A