It is not merely the amount of fertilising ingredients removed by the crop we have to take into account in estimating the value of certain manurial ingredients for the different crops. Two other considerations have to be remembered--viz., the amount of the constituents already present in the soil, and the ability of the different crops to obtain the ingredients from the soil. If we take into account these two considerations in estimating the value of farmyard manure as a general manure, we shall find that they accentuate the inadequacy of the ratio existing between the nitrogen and the mineral ingredients. Messrs Lawes and Gilbert have found in the Rothamsted experiments with farmyard manure, that while it restored the mineral ingredients, it was inadequate as a sufficient source of nitrogen. Nitrogen is, of all manurial ingredients, in least abundance in soils. It is consequently found that the ingredient in which farmyard manure requires to be reinforced is nitrogen. With regard to phosphoric acid and potash, it has already been shown that the ratio between them is probably greater than that in a good average manure. We should, arguing from this alone, be inclined to think that farmyard manure would be best reinforced with potash. The reverse is the case, however, as every farmer knows. This is due, first, to the fact that the potash, unlike the phosphoric acid, is entirely of a soluble nature, and therefore immediately available for the plant's needs; and secondly, to the fact that the necessity for the application of potash as a manure is generally not nearly so great as in the case of phosphoric acid. The result is, that farmyard manure will be, as a rule, more valuably supplemented by phosphoric acid than by potash. Another point of great importance, in estimating the value of farmyard manure as a chemical manure, is the inferior value possessed by much of the nitrogen it contains, as compared with the nitrogen in such artificial manures as nitrate of soda and sulphate of ammonia. According to the Rothamsted experiments, weight for weight, the nitrogen in farmyard manure is not half so valuable as it is in sulphate of ammonia. Much of the nitrogen becomes only very slowly available; not a little of it perhaps actually takes years to be converted into nitrates.[176] Thus, with regard to the direct value of farmyard manure as a manure, we have seen-- 1. That it contains a very small quantity of the three fertilising ingredients. 2. That the proportion in which these three ingredients are present is not the best proportion for the requirements of crops. 3. That the form in which a portion of these ingredients--nitrogen and phosphoric acid--is present is not of the most valuable kind. It is consequently not as a direct chemical manure that farmyard manure is pre-eminently valuable. We must seek for perhaps its most valuable properties in its indirect influence.