And wake our boy with kisses, then
    He'll take his favourite seat and tell
    Of his mysterious wanderings,
    And what the day he left befel.

    Sometimes I dream I see a man,
    His back towards me, by a brook
    Full of swift-darting trout, whose fins
    Flash past the weed-drifts as I look.
    A dying fish flaps on the grass—
    Then, led by something that I see,
    I steal still closer to his side:
    He turns. O, gracious God, 'tis he!

    Or—think not of it, my worn heart,
    Some winter's night, when I am old,
    There'll come a beggar lame and bent,
    And pale and shivering with the cold.
    And when I bring him to the fire,
    He'll call me by the fondling name
    He used to twenty years ago,—
    O, should I know him if he came?

    Dear George, if father should return
    When I am under churchyard grass,
    Tell him how oft I spoke of him,
    And take him out that he may pass
    Near where I lie asleep, and see
    If the tears fall for her he left.
    O, agony of lingering grief!—
    Yet, George, I am not quite bereft.

ARTIFICIAL FERTILITY.

AMONGST the tens of thousands of Englishmen
who daily consume their allowance of flour and
flesh, the majority believe that grass grows without
care, and that if land be ploughed or digged
and sown, a profitable crop will follow as a
matter of course. On the other hand, a select
and semi-scientific few, in equal ignorance,
denounce the stupidity of modern farmers, and
rhapsodise (out of a book they do not understand)
on some scheme for carrying the fertilisers
of hundreds of acres in a waistcoat-pocket,
or for converting into a revenue counted in
millions, the black streams that flow through the
sewers of our great cities. Yet there is a spice
of truth in both these crude notions.

In a new country, where land is cheap and
labour dear, colonists naturally settle on the
most fertile soils. In the more genial climates,
on such soils the rudest cultivation will
produce an abundant corn crop. The settler in
the Western States of America and in Australia
digs a hole with his hoe, scatters, and covers up
a few seeds, measures the length of the hoe's
handle, repeats the process, and, with no more
trouble, in due time gathers an ample return of
Indian corn. In India and China, if the soil be
merely scratched and irrigated, almost any crop
may be grown. The tropical air is loaded with
the elements of fertility.

Not so in our colder and long-cultivated
latitudes. There the rich alluvial soils which yield
richly year after year without artificial assistance,
are rare and precious. The great mass of the
farm-laud of this country gives back in proportion
as it receives, requiring, to make the most
profitable return, not only careful cultivation by
hand, or horse, or steam power, or all and other
mechanical aids to fertility, but a constant liberal
supply of home-made or purchased manure, and
purchased food for their live stock—generally
of all three.

From very early ages, all cultivating tribes
have, more or less, imperfectly attempted to
maintain and increase the fertility of soils by
two modes by rest, or, speaking technically,
by fallow, and by manure. On a great part of
the farm-land of France and Germany half is
alternately in fallow. These two methods were
used for thousands of years before chemists
discovered what it was that manure gave back
to the soil, and why certain soils were
reinvigorated by a cessation of cropping. The
Chinese practised manuring before Rome was
built, but the climate of China, especially as
regards rainfall and sun, removes that country
from any useful comparison with European
culture. The Romans, the most careful and
exact of agriculturists (whose practices are
minutely recorded by Columella), made all
possible use of fallows, but failed to understand
the necessity of manufacturing farm-yard
manure, by feeding live stock on food rich in
fertilising agents, and thus they reduced lands
from which they drew their supplies of corn, to
barrenness. The late Mr. Thomas Gisborne, a
very competent authority both as a Latinist
and agriculturist, states that the Roman
agricultural course was, with partial exceptions, a
crop of grain and fallow. Every year one-half
of the arable land was in grain, one-half
in fallow; arable land was manured only once
in six years, and in that period bore three grain
crops and one green crop—rather hard usage.
It is true that Roman writers on agriculture
give very minute directions for husbanding
manure and manure-making articles, but a
large portion of what was collected was
de-voted to vines, olives, and other fruit. The
results were, that in the course of half a
century the returns of corn decreased from fifteen
for one in the time of Varro, to four for one
in the time of Columella, and every later writer
complains of the diminishing produce, and thus
while the price of corn rose from three shillings
and sixpence to ten shillings in the time of
Cato, and sixty shillings the quarter in the
time of Pliny, and while the cost of labour did
not increase, the selling price and rent of land
steadily declined. In England—in spite of the
ominous prophecies of a distinguished and
angry foreign chemist, who, great in general
principles, has always failed miserably when
descending to give practical advice—the reverse
of all this has taken place in this country. The
price and rent of land and labour have risen
from generation to generation during the last
hundred years, and the amount of produce per
acre has been very materially increased on light
and naturally barren soils by the use of farm
and artificial manures, and on stiff clay by the
use of thorough draining and deep cultivation.