PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 119 



After having gone to his last year's setting, or quite often to an old 

 bed, and taken up the tip plants from between the rows, where they have 

 stood freezing and thawing all winter, he takes a spade and chucks it in, 

 moving it back and forward until he has made a glazed surface over all 

 parts, which no feeding root can penetrate, whips in his plants, presum- 

 ing to spread the roots out fan-shape but nearly always wadding them up 

 [Figure 1] so they can not reach the soil, and so they sour and lot, poison- 

 ing the plants. He now puts his foot on the opening, and, as he supposes, 

 closes it, but half the time leaves a large, open pocket at the bottom of the ' 

 opening, where the soil does not come in contact with the roots. 



In about a week or ten days' time he cultivates with a wide, long tooth, 

 going down several inches and very close to the plant, often disturbing 

 them, admitting air to the roots, and leaving the surface in lumps and 

 ridges. The usual spring drouth follows; his ground dries out, many 

 plants die, the rest make a feeble growth, and the harvest is a sad dis- 

 appointment. Let us look for the causes of failure. 



First we consider the action of water in the soil. Gravitation draws the 

 water down ; capillary action brings it again to the surface. What is cap- 

 illary action? The word capillary means a "hair-like passage." ^Ye can 

 best illustrate this action by taking panes of glass, tied together, one end 

 tight, but at the other we separate them with a thin sheet of paper and set 

 them in shallow water, on their sides. We notice the water passes up 

 rapidly at the closed end, clear to the top; but, when the glass is separated 

 by the paper, gravitation, being the stronger, permits the rise of water 

 only a short distance. The same law obtains if we take fine, dry sand in 

 a case and admit water at the bottom. It passes up rapidly to the surface, 

 and, so long as the water is carried off by the hot sun and wind, it will 

 continue to pass up; but if we loosen an inch or two at the surface, and 

 make the particles of earth so far apart that gravity is stronger than capil- 

 lary action, then the water will not pass. We illustrate this here by tak- 

 ing coarse gravel in a glass case and admitting water at the bottom, as 

 before. But it rises only a .short distance, because the interstices between 

 the particles are so large, and hold so much water, that gravitation is the 

 stronger, and water will not rise. 



We here take another case, filled with fine sand, as before, but through 

 the center we have placed a layer of chaff to represent the manure plowed 

 under. You notice here that the capillary passages are broken. There 

 are none through this chaff, nor are there any in the manure our grower 

 plowed under; and the only means of bringing water from the subsoil was 

 cut off. The water readily collects under the manure, but it can not get 

 up to the roots, neither will the roots pass through the manure, because it 

 is poison to them. Capillary action above the straw would continue, the 

 soil having been trodden down by the men carrying and setting the plants 

 and, the cultivation or loosening up of the surface having been delayed a 

 week, the ground has had abundant time to part with its moisture. 



Another seiyous error committed was in not pulverizing the surface 

 before turning it to the bottom of the furrow. Assuming the soil was an 

 ordinary loam or clay, with a firm texture, the plow broke the surface into 

 lumps and the bottom of the furrow was filled with large air chambers 

 which not only would not hold water, but admitted free air and greatly 

 facilitated evaporation. The after cultivation was as deep as the rootage, 

 with coarse cultivator which did not pulverize the soil, but left it loose so 



