On the right hand of the illustration (page 495) is shown the simplest mode of enriching the soil, namely, by spreading the manure on the surface of the earth, and then digging it in. Any mode of thus enriching the earth is a proof of civilisation. No savage ever dreamed of such a thing, and I doubt whether barbarians recognised the principle at any time.
Nowadays we have recognised the necessity of returning to the soil in one form the elements which we have taken from it in another. As usual in such arts of civilisation, the Chinese have long preceded us. They waste nothing, carrying, perhaps, its principles to an extent which scarcely suits our European ideas.
They even utilise the little clippings of hair, to which every Chinaman is almost daily subject, if he wishes to keep up his self-respect in public. The barbers carefully preserve these clippings, and sell them to gardeners. They are too precious to be used in general agriculture, but the flower artist, when he plants the seed, puts in the same hole a little pinch of human hair, knowing it to be a strong stimulant to growth.
Without multiplying examples of artificial manuring, most of which are too familiar to need description, we will proceed to the methods by which Nature has for countless centuries achieved the same work that Man has lately learned to undertake.
Nature abhors waste, and in the long-run will prove it, however wasteful may be the ways of her servants. Take, for example, the case of an ordinary tree, such as an elm, an oak, or a birch. In the autumn the leaves fall. In the next summer scarcely a dead leaf can be found. They have been decomposed by rain, dews, and gases, and have thus returned to the earth more than the nutriment which they took out of it.
Here man is apt to interfere. Knowing the invaluable productive powers of decayed leaves, he removes them as they fall, and stores them in heaps so as to form the costly, but almost indispensable, “leaf mould.” In so doing, however, he deprives the trees of their natural nutriment, and by degrees they dwindle and die.
Nature, in this case, shows her superiority over Art.
Then we have the remarkable fact that millions of animated beings die annually, and no vestige of their remains is found. Hyænas and vultures might account for a few bodies, the remnants of which have been found in ancient caverns. But there is no hyæna which could crush the leg bones of an adult elephant; and yet I suppose that neither in Africa nor Asia has any one discovered the body of an elephant or rhinoceros that had died a natural death.
In the first place, there is the curious point, which I have already mentioned, and which is shared by nearly every race of human savages, that when an animal feels that it has received its death-stroke, it accepts the conditions, withdraws itself from those who yet have life in them, and yields up its life as calmly as if it were but sleeping.
But what becomes of the body? As to such enormous beings as elephants, the various species of rhinoceros, and whales, which are as large as several elephants, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus put together, I cannot say from practical knowledge.