[60] “Portable soil” is not the latest departure in agriculture. The last one is the watering of the soil with special liquids containing special microbes. It is a fact that chemical manures, without organic manure, seldom prove to be sufficient. On the other hand, it was discovered lately that certain microbes in the soil are a necessary condition for the growth of plants. Hence the idea of sowing the beneficent microbes, which rapidly develop in the soil and fertilise it. We certainly shall soon hear more of this new method, which is experimented upon on a large scale in Germany, in order to transform peat-bogs and heavy soils into rich meadows and fields.
[61] Ponce, La culture maraîchère, 1869; Gressent, Le potager moderne, 7th edition in 1886; Courtois-Gérard, Manuel pratique de culture maraîchère, 1863; L. G. Gillekens, Cours pratique de culture maraîchère, Bruxelles, 1895; Vilmorin, Le bon jardinier (almanac). The general reader who cares to know about the productivity of the soil will find plenty of examples, well classified, in the most interesting work La Répartition métrique des impôts, by A. Toubeau, 2 vols., 1880. I do not quote many excellent English manuals, but I must remark that the market-gardening culture in this country has also obtained results very highly prized by the Continental gardeners, and that the chief reproach to be addressed to it is its relatively small extension. French market-gardening having been lately introduced into England, several manuals have been published for that purpose. The little work, French Gardening, by Thomas Smith, London (Utopia Press), 1909, deserves special mention, as it contains the results of one year’s observation of the work of a French gardener, specially invited to England by Mr. Joseph Fels, and gives (with illustrations) a mass of practical indications and numerical data as to the cost and the value of the produce. A subsequent work of the same author, The Profitable Culture of Vegetables for Market Gardeners, Small Holders, and Others, London (Longmans, Green), 1911, deals in detail with the ordinary culture of vegetables and the intensive culture of the French gardeners.
[62] Manuel pratique de culture maraîchère, by Courtois-Gérard, 4th edit., 1868.
[63] Already it is partly removed in France and Belgium, owing to the public laboratories where analyses of seeds and manure are made free. The falsifications discovered by these laboratories exceed all that could have been imagined. Manures, containing only one-fifth part of the nutritious elements they were supposed to contain, were found to be quite common; while manures containing injurious matters, and no nutritious parts whatever, were not unfrequently supplied by firms of “respectable” repute. With seeds, things stand even worse. Samples of grass seeds which contained 20 per cent. of injurious grasses, or 20 per cent. of grains of sand, so coloured as to deceive the buyer, or even 10 per cent. of a deadly poisonous grass, passed through the Ghent laboratory.
[64] During the winter of 1890 a friend of mine, who lived in a London suburb, used to get his butter from Bavaria per parcel post. It cost him 10s. the eleven pounds in Bavaria, parcel post inclusive (2s. 2d.), 6d. for the money order, and 2½d. the letter; total, less than 11s. Butter of an inferior quality (out of comparison), with 10 to 15 per cent. of water inclusive, was sold in London at 1s. 6d. the lb. at the same time.
[65] The data for the calculation of the cost of production of wheat in this country are those given by the Mark Lane Express; they will be found in a digestible form in an article on wheat-growing in the Quarterly Review for April, 1887, and in W. E. Bear’s book, The British Farmer and his Competitors, London (Cassell), 1888. Although they are a little above the average, the crop taken for the calculations is also above the average. A similar inquiry has been made on a large scale by the Russian Provincial Assemblies, and the whole was summed up in an elaborate paper, in the Vyestnik Promyshlennosti, No. 49, 1887. To compare the paper kopecks with pence I took the rouble at 63/100 of its nominal value: such was its average quotation during the year 1886. I took 475 English lb. in the quarter of wheat.
[66] The rents have declined since 1887, but the prices of wheat also went down. It must not be forgotten that as the best acres only are selected for wheat-growing, the rent for each acre upon which wheat is grown must be taken higher than the average rent per acre in a farm of from 200 to 300 acres.
[67] L. de Lavergne pointed out as far back as fifty years ago that the States were at that time the chief importers of guano. Already in 1854 they imported it almost to the same amount as this country, and they had, moreover, sixty-two manufactories of guano which supplied it to the amount of sixteen times the imports. Compare also Ronna’s L’agriculture aux Etats Unis, 1881; Lecouteux, Le blé; and J. R. Dodge’s Annual Report of the American Department of Agriculture for 1885 and 1886. Schaeffle’s work was also summed up in Schmoller’s Jahrbuch.
[68] See also J. R. Dodge’s Farm and Factory, New York, 1884.
[69] Some additional information on this subject will be found in the articles of mine: “Some Resources of Canada,” and “Recent Science,” in the Nineteenth Century, January, 1898, and October, 1897. I see from the Experimented Farms’ Reports for 1909 that on the average 38,000 samples of seeds are sent in this way to the farmers every year; in 1909 more than 38,000 farmers united in experiments as to the relative merits of the different sorts of wheat, oats, and barley under trial. I think that my friend, Dr. William Saunders, is quite right in saying that this system of supplying a great number of farmers with small quantities of choice seeds has contributed notably to increase the yield of corn in Canada.