A True Recipe

except for show: but being carried to the field, it makes no profit there. Is this not, therefore, a manifest ignorance that is greatly to be regretted?

I do not believe any of this, if you do not give me another reason.

You must understand first the reason why one carries manure to the field, and having understood the cause, you will easily believe what I have told you. You must confess to me that when you bring manure to the field, it is to give back to it a portion of what has been taken from it: for it is thus, that in sowing wheat, one has hope that one grain will bring forth several. Now, this cannot be without taking some substance from the earth, and if the field has been sown for many years, its substance is carried away with the straw and grain. Wherefore, it is necessary to bring back the manure, mud, and filth, and even the excrement and waste, both of men and of beasts, if it were possible, in order to restore to the place the same substance that will have been taken from it. And this is why I say that manure must not be put mercy. at the mercy of the rains, because the rains, while passing through the said manure, carry away the salt, which is the principal substance and virtue of the manure.

You have just told me a proposition that makes me think more than all the others, and I know that many will mock you because you say that there is salt in manure: I pray you give me some apparent reason to make me believe it.

Before this, you found it strange that I told you some philosophy is required for farmers, and now you ask me for a reason, which is quite dependent on my first proposition. I will tell it to you, but I pray you to hold it in such esteem as it requires of itself: in understanding it, you will understand many things that you have previously ignored. Note, therefore, that there is no seed, whether good or bad, that does not carry within itself some species of salt; and when straw, hay, and other