phosphorus as the total amounts applied in this six-year or
seven-year rotation.

"In this manner the farmer extends the time during which he can take
from the soil crops whose value exceed their cost. He applies only
one-fourth or possibly one-half as much of the most deficient
element as the crops harvested require, and thus he continues for a
longer time to 'work the land for all that's in it! '"

"Well, isn't that the limit?" said Adelaide, with emphasis on the
"isn't," for which she received a disapproving look from her mother,
so far as her almost angel-face could give such a look.

"So far as human ingenuity has yet devised," replied Percy, "this
system appears to be the limit; but this limit has not yet been
reached on any Westover soil. If anyone can devise a method for
extending this limit he should apply it on a type of soil covering
more than two-fifths of the total area of St. Mary County and more
than 45,000 acres of Prince George County, Maryland, some of which
almost adjoins the District of Columbia. This soil has been reduced
in fertility until it contains only one-third as much phosphorus as
your poorest land. I found a Western man who had come down to
Maryland a few years ago. He saw that beautiful almost level upland
soil, and it looked so good to him that he bought and kept buying
until he had 'squared out' a tract of eleven hundred acres. He
still had left money enough to fence the farm and to put the
buildings in good repair. He was a live-stock farmer from the West
who just knew from his own experience and from that of the Secretary
of Agriculture, in the use of a little clover or farm manure in
unlocking the great reserves of an almost virgin soil, that all his