And with reference to this last very important point, I may remind the reader that Sir John Lawes has well pointed out that “All our experiments tend to show that it is the physical condition of the soil, its capacity for absorbing and retaining moisture, its permeability to roots, and its capacity for absorbing and radiating heat, that is of more importance than its strictly-speaking chemical composition.”  Now as regards the chemical aspect of the manurial question, if we assume, as we have every reason to do from the small quantity of potash required, and its supply from decomposing stones in the land, that the potash does not require to be taken into account, we shall find that our nitrogen and phosphoric acid can be far more cheaply supplied by fish, or by a mixture of bone-meal and oil-cake than by farmyard manure, and should it be found that potash does require to be added, we could obtain it more cheaply from ashes or kainit.  Then in order to provide the padding that farmyard manure supplies, and to furnish nitrogen in a slowly-acting form, we could collect dry leaves, twigs from jungle trees, ferns, and any other available vegetable matter, form them into a compost with some earth, or jungle top soil, and apply the mixture to the land.  With such a compost as I have suggested, bone-meal or fish-manure in small quantity might be mixed, and we should then have a very good substitute for all the chemical and physical advantages to be derived from the very best kind of farmyard manure.  But there is another way of arriving at the same end, which is open to many planters, and that is by collecting top soil from the fringe of jungle commonly left round the plantation, or from the uncultivated jungle of the estate, or from adjacent pieces of jungle land.  And such pieces of land varying from ten to twenty acres can commonly be purchased, and can be used to supply top soil.  This, of course, has in it much vegetable matter in various stages of decay, and a mixture of it with a small quantity of bone-meal would form a manure superior, as I shall afterwards show when I come to treat of top soil, to farmyard manure chemically, and superior to it from a physical point of view.  To such local manurial resources I would call particular attention, as planters have hitherto relied far too exclusively on cattle manure, and imported manures, such as bones, fish, and oil-cake, and it is evident that we could dispense with much of all these manures if we made a full use of the resources I have recommended.  In concluding my remarks on cattle manure I may observe that it is both costly to supply and to apply to the land.  It is difficult, of course, to make exact calculations on the subject, as the facilities for supplying litter vary so much, but generally speaking it costs from 70 to 80 rupees an acre if we manure at about the rate of a third of a bushel per tree.