Letters to The Editor

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21734, 17 March 1936, Page 9

Letters to The Editor

Correspondents who do not comply with our rules set out in the last column of our Leader Page will excuse us from noticing their letters.

Eglon Sercombe.—Your letter is unrelated to the subject under discussion. Mechanical World.—Your name and address have been sent on to the enquirer .

laid down more than 20 years What is the lesson taught. That these shallow-rooted plants must give place to plants having the ?hility to be independent of the conditions of the surface soils, which cap penetrate by their roots to strata of the soil whereon a hoof has never trod, and which, consequently, contain large stores o£ the essential mineral elements ol: which the surface soils have been depleted. These mineral elements can be brought to the surface and stored in the foliage to Vip* liberated by mastication and digestion of the animal feeding thereon to fill all its requirements, and the balance goes to enrich the surface by the droppings from the animal for use of future surface rooted plants. In addition, the plant in question is also capable of extracting nitrogen from the air for its own use, and also to enrich the soil in which it grows. Some varieties of such a plant, as shown by analysis by the Government chemist, contain 10.86 per cent, of mineial elements. So 10 tons of hay from such ■a plant contain more than a ton of these essential minerals, which Mr Leslie, late veterinary officer of Lincoln College, says cost the farmer sometimes to procure them aitificially £BO a ton. . .. . I leave the remainder of this lettei to abler pens than mine. My aim was to show the so-called poor land is capable of producing more wealth an acre than the so-called good land held by big land-holders, and often is so situated to be near school, railways, good roads, etc.. If planted in lucerne, the king of fodders, and if it carried only half the sheen they carried at the prison farm. Can a man make a living on land carrying four and a half sheep to the acre? —Yours, etc.. A. H. WHEELER. Styx. March 14. 1936.