Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

slopes at the mountain's foot, and gradually encroached until it reached the very summit. All had passed away; all had been worked over by the plow or mattock, and for its principles of political economy drew largely from La Fontaine's fables.

But Nature punishes cruelly such gross infractions of her laws. Under the influences induced by the removal of the forests and the complete denudation of the whole country, rains became more rare, but heavier, and successively washed away the lower, then the higher levels of the bed of mould; then followed the sand, then the gravel, and finally the larger sized rock with which the soil of the entire valley is now covered; a considerable portion of this country presents this deplorable spectacle at present; a portion-the mountains stripped of all, and nothing but the skeleton remaining, and which barely furnishes scanty subsistence to a few straggling rosemarys, dwarf box, and scrub oaks-a promenade, rather than a pasture, for the goats of the neighborhood; another portion-the valleys and plains formerly celebrated for their fertility, but which at present are covered with a bed more or less thick of pebbles and stones, rounded by attrition. Many of the streams and rivulets without a single drop of water during four fifths of the year, but discharging through their channels frightful masses of water, mud and stones after every rain storm which sheds its contents in the superior portions of the basin; devastating torrents, which come with the rapidity of an arrow, and disappear just as quickly, and leaving no other traces of their existence than the ravages committed.

These are the successive consequences and final result of a system of culture without cattle and without manures.

Moreover, if in Sicily, Algeria, and Syria the results have been less fatal, they must be attributed to special causes: in Sicily, to the thickness and peculiar nature of the soil strata, and to the very slight inclination of the slopes; and in Algeria and Syria, to a depopulation, which has allowed nature partially to repair the evil inflicted by man; because it is said, here as elsewhere, the first act of man was to destroy, and after the lapse of ages only does he commence to repair.

That which has transpired in ages long since obscured, and in the midst of events which might have been mistaken for the determining causes of these results, has almost within the memory of man taken place in a country geographically very distant from those mentioned, but which are very close to our own doors. The condition of the country referred to, is such that it is not possible to mistake the origin of the evil. The older Southern States, namely, Virginia, the two Carolinas and Georgia, present at the present time the strange spectacle of a vast number of large and important plantations out of repair, exhausted, although well situated, which are not only not sold, but abandoned by the proprie

tors, who have removed to the farther west to open new plantations.* And why? Read what a recent Virginia journalist writes: "We have sold under the form of tobacco, wheat and cotton, the flesh and blood of our soil, and our plantations, now exhausted, refuse to produce, or to yield products which will pay the expense of cultivation."

Thus in the space of a very few years, these virgin soils, which had been enriched by the decay of vegetable matter derived during the course of long ages from the forests which grew upon it, have been reduced to a state of almost absolute sterility by a system of cultivation which excluded cattle and consequently excluded manures.

It is very remarkable that in the United States, and more especially in the States just named, there is such a paucity of beef cattle, and, more thau all, that what few cattle there are should be so kept as to produce very little, if any, manure. During the favorable season of the year they are pastured on permanent pastures, or else permitted to run in the forests and browse as best they may; and, finally, to avoid the labor of cleansing the cattle stables, the structures are, as a general thing, so arranged that not only the urine but the solid excrement is carried off by

water.

In a word, the Southerners are persisting in the errors of the original colonists; they are using very little manure, and are depending upon fallows, or leaving the land vacant for a long time to repair the injuries inflicted by cultivation. It is possible that in the greater portion of the United States, where the population is yet so comparatively thin and the surface so immense, that this wasteful and careless system is the best. Can we permit our lands to lie waste for twenty or thirty years after having exhausted them? That is the question for us to solve. Manure, then, is the only means at our command of preserving indefinitely the productive fertility of our soils, and cattle being the only medium means by or through which the amount necessary for this purpose can be obtained; thus rendering cattle really the primary condition for agricultural production, and, we add, the basis of the nation's existence. Not only is it really necessary for us to have cattle, but it is necessary that we possess vast numbers of them. If our agriculture suffers; if it is poor; if the products are very expensive, the cause of this entire category of this undesirable condition, may be traced to the fact that we do not possess the requisite number of cattle.

The proof of the truth of the statement may be found in the double fact, that the greater part of the expenses incurred in cultivation is in proportion to the surface cultivated and independent of the product, and that the effect of a given quantity of manure is, up to a certain point, in proportion to the richness of the soil. For example, if 100 pounds of

Among other authorities consult Miss Martineau's travels in the United States.

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

ordinary manure are required to manure normally a certain tract of land to make it produce 15 pounds of grain in a rich soil, already well manured, then this quantity of manure will produce not exceeding 10 pounds of grain on a soil of medium fertility, and only 5, 4, or even 3 on a poor soil.

:

Let us suppose there are two contiguous fields of the same soil, both paying the same rent, the same taxes, having the same amount of labor bestowed on each, the same quantity of seed per acre-in a word, being alike in every respect and having the same treatment, with a single exception, viz. the one being abundantly manured, and the other unmanured. From the crop of the first piece or tract must be deducted the expense of the manure and the cost of labor in applying it, but this crop will be 25 to 30 bushels per acre. The other field will not yield to exceed 10 or 12 bushels per acre. Is it necessary to add that the expense of the manure is much more than covered by the excess of product, and that the price of the product of each acre is lowered in the same proportion?

[ocr errors]

For proof of this statement that the excess of product lowers the price of the product, the following extract from M. Leconteux's excellent work entitled "Principes economique de la Culture ameliorate," page 12, showing the connection between the product of wheat, and the amount received for it on the one hand, and the amount of manure employed on the other:

It is well known that a manuring, and especially a generous manuring, prolongs its action for several years; therefore the cost of manure must be proportioned and distributed among the several crops which it has produced in excess of the normal amount

11B

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][merged small][merged small][subsumed][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

From this table it appears that by applying 9,600 kilos of manure it costs 17 francs to produce a hectolitre of wheat; when 14,000 kilos of manure was used the hectolitre cost 133 francs, but when 20,000 kilos of manure were used the cost was reduced to 74 francs per hectolitre. It is, then, not without reason that it is said that there can be no successful agriculture without cattle. With cattle, and many cattle, is the great and in fact the only means at our command of increasing the yield of our crops commensurately with the increasing demands for consumption, and at the same time reducing the cost of production.

OTHER PRODUCTS OF CATTLE.

de crops, a prise. In t selved into

the income f plication

balds good

In the preceding sections it was stated that from the point of view of the production of manures, that cattle may be regarded as machines, the forage and litter as the raw material, and manure as the product of fabrication.

But, by an inverse relation from that which is found in other industries, here the article fabricated or produced is of less value than the raw material, and the object sought really is to produce it gratuitously.

*The figures in this column were taken from a report by M. Dombasle in the 9th part of the "Anneles de Roville."

; henc

ple, but

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

† From 9.60 kilogrammes of manure 960 kilogrammes, or 12 hectolitres, of wheat were obtained; but whilst the gross product was 14 hectolitres, 2 hectolitres of seed were used, and this quantity must be deducted to show the net product.

NOTE.-The kilogramme is 21-5 pounds avoirdupois, the hectolitre is 22 gallons, the hectare is 2.47, or nearly 21 acres.

[blocks in formation]

Every one knows this apparent enigma, that the marketable product is the same animal itself which has produced the manure. As an offset to a greater or less proportion of the expense or cost of nutriment and other expenses incurred in keeping cattle, these products occasion the relatively greater or less price of the manure. Now, should it not be one of the first conditions of successful agriculture to obtain large quantities of manure at a very low price?

Then whatever means will reduce the price of production of manure, will be the most efficacious in reducing at the same time the price of all the crops, and above all will guarantee beneficial results to the enterprise. In this, as in other cases, the means to be employed may be resolved into a very simple principle, viz.: diminish the expenses or increase the income from cattle. But, unfortunately, if the principle is simple, the application of it is far from being equally simple. And the same rule holds good throughout almost the entire series of agricultural operations; hence, it is not without reason that it is said: "The theory is simple, but the practice difficult." We will endeavor, nevertheless, to point out the means in a general way; notwithstanding it involves the entire question of cattle economy.

A REDUCTION OF EXPENSES.

The most important of these expenses is that of nutriment or nourishment. It is not simply a question of the immediate reduction of the quantity or quality of nutriment;-far from it, as it will be shown in the succeeding paragraph that the agriculturist has an immense interest at stake in making his cattle consume all the nutriment possible up to that limit where the consumption is no longer profitable.

It is upon the price of the alimentary substances, whether it be the price paid if purchased, or whether it be, as is most ordinarily the case, the cost of production, that he must take into account in realizing his economic practices.

But the cost of the production of the forage crops, like that of all other vegetable productions dependent upon cultivation, is, for the greater part functional; that is, if you please, dependent upon the quantity of manure, and the cost of the production of the manure-there is here a circle, or a reciprocal relation which is necessarily mischievous to poor cultivation, but from which it is, nevertheless, possible to depart by the combinations in cultivation which greatly influences the price or cost of the production of forage.

We are not going to speak of details, but may remark, nevertheless, that in France the letter and not the spirit of this rule is adopted, namely, the forage crop has been augmented. At the same time the nature and the special character of their exigencies has not been sufficiently consid

« VorigeDoorgaan »