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variety, sown 14th September, at the rate of 1-1/4 bushels per acre. It
was quite thick enough. One breadth of the drill was sown at the rate of
two bushels per acre. This is earlier. "But," said Mr. J., "the other
will have larger heads, and will yield more." After examining the wheat,
we went to look at the piles of muck and manure in the barn-yard, and
from these to a splendid crop of timothy. "It will go 2-1/2 tons of hay
per acre," said Mr. J., "and now look at this adjoining field. It is
just as good land naturally, and there is merely a fence between, and
yet the grass and clover are so poor as hardly to be worth cutting."

"What makes the difference?" I asked.

Mr. Johnston, emphatically, "Manure."

The poor field did not belong to him!

Mr. Johnston's farm was originally a cold, wet, clayey soil. Mr. Geddes'
land did not need draining, or very little. Of course, land that needs
draining, is richer after it is drained, than land that is naturally
drained. And though Mr. Johnston was always a good farmer, yet he says
he "never made money until he commenced to drain." The accumulated
fertility in the land could then be made available by good tillage, and
from that day to this, his land has been growing richer and richer. And,
in fact, the same is true of Mr. Geddes' farm. It is richer land to-day
than when first plowed, while there is one field that for seventy years
has had no manure applied to it, except plaster. How is this to be
explained? Mr. Geddes would say it was due to clover and plaster. But
this does not fully satisfy those who claim, (and truly), that "always
taking out of the meal-tub and never putting in, soon comes to the
bottom." The clover can add nothing to the land, that it did not get
from the soil, except organic matter obtained from the atmosphere, and
the plaster furnishes little or nothing except lime and sulphuric acid.
There are all the other ingredients of plant-food to be accounted
for--phosphoric acid, potash, soda, magnesia, etc. A crop of clover, or
corn, or wheat, or barley, or oats, will not come to perfection unless
every one of these elements is present in the soil in an available
condition. Mr. Geddes has not furnished a single ounce of any one of
them.

"Where do they come from?"

I answer, _from the soil itself_. There is probably enough of these
elements in the soil to last ten thousand years; and if we return to the
soil all the straw, chaff, and bran, and sell noth