HOW SOILS WERE RUINED BY PROTECTION. [To TEE EDITOR 91
THE " SPECTATOR:1 Sin,—The exhaustion of the natural fertility of soils by long- continued corn-growing is not understood as it should be. Admirable as were the experiments in corn-growing by Sir J. B. Lawes, they helped to distract attention from the national danger of forced wheat production. You may grow wheat on land until it is so exhausted that it will hardly grow weeds. This is exemplified at home on the corn farms in our Eastern Counties, on the exhausted thin arable land all over England, and on the abandoned wheat lands in the Eastern States of America. For ancient examples, all the countries that supplied Imperial Rome with, corn were reduced to poverty, from which they have not yet recovered. The country that exports its grain exhausts an element of vitality which ages of rest will not always renew. Old English farming sought to check the .process by "fallowing,"—giving the land rest. Modern scientific farmers seek to attain the same end by alternation of crops and manuring, the latter often at the expense of the rest of the farm. These methods retard, they cannot cure, the deterioration. In England, where grass can grow all the year round, land laid down be permanent pasture will in time recover its fertility; but the "spine," the top slice of turf (humus), rich with animal and vegetable remains, accumulates so slowly that the adage, "To break a pasture makes a man; to make a pasture breaks a man," bolds a truth painfully illustrated on the estates where the old Protective Corn-laws stimulated unnatural wheat-growing. Protective duties raised rents and tithes in the last century, and for forty years the landed proprietors revelled in spending wealth from the stored fertility of the old grass lands. They treated principal as interest, with the - usual result, They are nqw led to hope that if suitably protected by fiscal tariffs, 8c.c., they might, prodigal like enjoy another little _flutter, on the strength of Mr. Chamberlain's "veal." But it would not answer. The old stored riches are gone, and although -Corn might be dearer, the huge grain, ships gathering freights all over the world -would keep prices tee, low to affect rents materially.—; am, Sir, JOHN HIGGINS.
St0C1CWOOdS, Pylle, Someriet.
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