THE EXHAUSTION OF SOIL.

Patea Mail, Volume IV, Issue 411, 26 March 1879, Page 2

THE EXHAUSTION OF SOIL.

Good soil is the chief item in a nation’s wealth. It may seem a homely possession, but, like health and virtue in a wife, it tvill remain to bless ns when more finical and popular gifts are forgotten. Gold could draw adventurers and robbers by thousands to Pern end Mexico, while the soil of North America was left with contempt to the buffalo and the Indian. Now, however, that despised soil supports a great and prosperous nation, while the lauds of gold are like miserable drunkards on the day following their excess. In its bearing on the welfare of men, the soil stands side by side, in importance, .with the .atmosphere and the sunshine. But while no,.human folly could corrupt the former, and no human extravagance exhaust the latter, the richest soil without skill and care may, in the course of years, be rendered as sterile as Sahara. A young man may be started in life with a good balance at the bank, but he cannot draw on this for ever; the lime will come when it will be exhausted, and he will only be able to draw out what he has pat in. A young country starts with a good credit balance in its soil, bat this credit will not last for ever; the time will come when it can only draw out what it has first put in. Now it woud be a ruinous mistake on the part of the young man to think that by drawing only small cheques, or by drawing a rotation of small, big, bigger, and biggest cheques, his credit might last for ever without a fresh deposit. He would discover his error when' his folly had made him a pauper. So if the young country hopes that bj grazing, or by a four years’ or a five years’ course of rotation of crops, it will secure permanent fertility, it falls into a wofnl error. Every crop grown upon the land, and removed from it, leaves the laud poorer, so that whether by big cheques, or by cheques for small amounts, the original fertility of the soil is lessened each year that the land is used to produce anything useful to man. This is a very elementary truth ; we would be ashamed to dwell upon it, if we did not know that many thousands of acres of the best land in the colonies have already been rained by disregarding it, and that the work of folly is still going on. There are large districts in South Australia whore wheat lias been grown after wheat for thirty years : no farmer worthy of the name will be surprised to learfr that those districts arc mined, and though once first-class, are now in the lowest class. We have ourselves had occasion to notice a largo field, where for twenty years, with a single change to English barley, wheat had been grown after wheat; over the fence was virgin land ; in the twenty-first year both sides of the fence was under crop. It is no exaggeration to say that the difference of the two sides separated by the fence, was very apparent to the naked eye; the new land being dark with organic matter, the old being lighter in colour, and seeming to contain a much larger proportion of sand. The crops were over thirty bushels for the new soil, and about six lor the old. These soils were originally alike ; human folly and would-be economy had made the difference. It was stated the other day that people who have exhausted their land arc flocking from South Australia, and becoming free selectors in Victoria, there to subdue a piece of land, flog it to death, abandon the carcass, and repeat the operation on a fresh subject. If we turn to America, wo have another frightful example of wasting the resources of a country. Farming has slowly moved back from the Atlantic coast, leaving the more or less exhausted land behind, and has now reached the “ far West,” whence such is the distance grain has to be transported over country rendered ‘barren by spoliation, that unless the price of wheat rules at from 55s to 60s a quarter in Britain, the crops are allowed to shed themselves on the field. These facts show how the birthright of mankind may be squandered away by a generation that is in haste to be rich. It is true that no great distress has yet fallen on any part of New Zealand through the exhaustion of the soil, but that is perhaps more owing to its great richness, than to the wisdom with which it has been cultivated. No disparagement is intended to those excellent farmers amongst us who unite knowledge with experience, and who are ever on the alert for suggestions and improvements; but while there is a wide-spread inclination to ignore such Useful associations as fanners’ chibs, to laugh at agricultural chemistry, and to think it very clever to say, “ Oh, I am a practical man} 1 don’t trouble myself about your theories,” there is ground to fear that even in New Zealand farming is not, on the whole, conducted with absolute wisdom. The columns that are to follow will be devoted to the statement and illucidation of statistics and scientific facts, and to drawing a few plam conclusions from them. (To he Continued.}