“He sowed the clover and grass seed and they germinated well.  He even secured a fine catch, but it failed to hold, as we say out West.  He tried again and again, and failed as often as he tried.  He showed me his best clover on a field that had received some manure made from feed part of which was purchased, and that had also received five hundred pounds per acre of hydrated lime, which he was finally persuaded to use, after becoming convinced that clover-growing on old abandoned land was not exactly as easy as clover-growing on a ‘run-down’ farm of almost virgin soil in the West.”

“And was the clover good after that treatment?” asked Mr. West.

“No, not good,” said Percy, “but in some places where the manure had been applied to the high points, as is the custom of the Western farmer, the yield of clover, weeds, and foul grass together must have been nearly a half ton to the acre.  Fortunately he waited to fully stock his farm with cattle and sheep until he should have some assurance of producing sufficient feed to keep them for a time at least, instead of making the common mistake of the less experienced farmer who goes to the country from the city, and who imagines that, if he has plenty of stock on the farm, they must of necessity produce abundance of manure with which to enrich his land for the production of abundant crops.”

“Well, now you’ll have to show me,” said the grandmother.  “To my way of thinking that’s a pretty good kind of a notion for a farmer to have, and I’d like to know what’s wrong with it.”

Again a shadow seemed to cross the sweet face as the mother’s glance turned from grandma to Adelaide.

“The system has some merit,” replied Percy, “but it starts at the wrong point in the circle.  Cattle and sheep must first have feed before they can produce the fertilizer with which to enrich the soil; and people who would raise stock on poor land should always produce a good supply of food before they procure the stock requiring to be fed.  There is probably no more direct route to financial disaster than for one to insist upon over-stocking a farm that is essentially worn out.”

“But doesn’t pasturing enrich the soil?” asked the grandmother.

“Pasturing may enrich the soil only in a single element of plant food,” said Percy.  “In all other elements simple pasturing must always contribute toward soil depletion.  If the pasture herbage contains a sufficient proportion of legume plants so that the fixation of free nitrogen exceeds the utilization of nitrogen in animal growth, then the soil will be enriched in that element, although with the same growth of plants it would be enriched more rapidly without pasturing; for animals are not made out of nothing.  Meat, milk, and wool are all highly nitrogenous products.

“On the other hand no amount of pasturing can add to the soil a single pound of any one of the six mineral elements, and phosphorus, which is normally the most limited of all these elements, is abstracted from the soil and retained by the animals in very considerable amounts.  As an average one-fourth of the phosphorus contained in the food consumed is retained in the animal products, especially in bone, flesh, and milk.”