In 16 years, however, as we have seen, only 1,517 pounds of nitrogen, was contained in their produce of grain, straw, roots, et cetera—­that is, far less than was supplied in the manure; and in the same period the same extent of surface of good meadow-land (one hectare = a Hessian morgen), which received no nitrogen in manure, 2,062 pounds of nitrogen.

It is well known that in Egypt, from the deficiency of wood, the excrement of animals is dried, and forms the principal fuel, and that the nitrogen from the soot of this excrement was, for many centuries, imported into Europe in the form of sal ammoniac, until a method of manufacturing this substance was discovered at the end of the last century by Gravenhorst of Brunswick.  The fields in the delta of the Nile are supplied with no other animal manures than the ashes of the burnt excrements, and yet they have been proverbially fertile from a period earlier than the first dawn of history, and that fertility continues to the present day as admirable as it was in the earliest times.  These fields receive, every year, from the inundation of the Nile, a new soil, in its mud deposited over their surface, rich in those mineral elements which have been withdrawn by the crops of the previous harvest.  The mud of the Nile contains as little nitrogen as the mud derived from the Alps of Switzerland, which fertilises our fields after the inundations of the Rhine.  If this fertilising mud owed this property to nitrogenised matters; what enormous beds of animal and vegetable exuviae and remains ought to exist in the mountains of Africa, in heights extending beyond the limits of perpetual snow, where no bird, no animal finds food, from the absence of all vegetation!

Abundant evidence in support of the important truth we are discussing, may be derived from other well known facts.  Thus, the trade of Holland in cheese may be adduced in proof and illustration thereof.  We know that cheese is derived from the plants which serve as food for cows.  The meadow-lands of Holland derive the nitrogen of cheese from the same source as with us; i.e. the atmosphere.  The milch cows of Holland remain day and night on the grazing-grounds, and therefore, in their fluid and solid excrements return directly to the soil all the salts and earthy elements of their food:  a very insignificant quantity only is exported in the cheese.  The fertility of these meadows can, therefore, be as little impaired as our own fields, to which we restore all the elements of the soil, as manure, which have been withdrawn in the crops.  The only difference is, in Holland they remain on the field, whilst we collect them at home and carry them, from time to time, to the fields.

The nitrogen of the fluid and solid excrements of cows, is derived from the meadow-plants, which receive it from the atmosphere; the nitrogen of the cheese also must be drawn from the same source.  The meadows of Holland have, in the lapse of centuries, produced millions of hundredweights of cheese.  Thousands of hundredweights are annually exported, and yet the productiveness of the meadows is in no way diminished, although they never receive more nitrogen than they originally contained.