STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 299 



tilled soil a combination of the above causes tends to produce the desired 

 result. The increased porosity of the soil assists in this respect, because 

 finely divided particles of earth retain moisture, which a rouglier one 

 would not. Water is held by attraction between minute particles of soil, 

 when it would quickly escape from a coarser material. No system of 

 green manuring has yet been adopted by the farmers of this State. 

 Occasionally the natural growth furnishes a kind of substitute. Of |all 

 the varieties of Lucerne that have been suggested as suitable for this pur- 

 pose, none is more likely to be adopted than the Chilian alfalfa. It is a 

 valuable j^lant, well suited to the climate of the Pacific coast, and will 

 succeed w^ell in most cases on a naked fallow. 



The practice of burning straw is extremely reprehensible, and should 

 be discontinued. The ameliorating effects of ploughing in the debris of 

 the threshing pile, when combined with the droppings of animals, is 

 plainly visible in our upland plains for several succeeding years. There 

 is too little vegetable matter in much of our grain land, even at present. 

 Straw may contain little fertilizing matter in itself, but one of its values 

 is in fixing ammonia. When combined with excrementitious matter, it 

 becomes converted by fermentation into ulmic, humic, and other organic 

 acids, which have a strong affinity for volatile alkali, and thus retain 

 that most valuable constituent in our manure. 



Our soil is rich; it is even considered inexhaustible; but hy continuous 

 cropping we carry away year after year certain known agents that are 

 necessary to the reproduction of vegetable matter, of v/hich some por- 

 tion at least must be returned back, or farmei'S will learn in a few years 

 that there is a limit to the power of nature. 



A difference of opinion seems to exist among fiirmers in regard to deep 

 and shallow ploughing, and the advocates on both sides seem to be fully 

 convinced that they are right. The vrriter has often heard persons speak 

 of raising good crops by shallow ploughing, and upon alluvial soils that 

 are rich in vegetable humus, it is granted that this can be done, nor would 

 the result of a different practice justify a farmer in pursuing it; but with 

 calcareous and aluminous soil the case is different; such soils require deep 

 ploughing to enable the atmospheric gases more easily to penetrate them, 

 to render them more absorbent of the winter rain, and consequently 

 better able to withstand the severe drought of this climate. Every prac- 

 tical farmer knows that on deeply ploughed soils, crops are less exposed 

 to drought, and if ploughing is useful at all, it must be so in proportion 

 to the amount of soil disturbed, provided that the spongioles of the crop 

 are capable of appropriating a greater amount of soil by its disturbance. 

 In dry weather, as each particle of moisture is evaporated from the sur- 

 face, it is succeeded by another, until the whole soil is filled with the 

 ascending moisture. Deep ploughing thus turns the drought to good 

 account, tlie filtering process is reversed, or, in scientific parlance, capil- 

 lary attraction is increased. The farmer in the fixble, whose will has been 

 so often quoted as having informed his sons that he had buried a sum of 

 money soniewhere on his farm, conferred a greater benefit upon them by 

 the disturbance of the soil than he would have done by the supposed 

 legacy. The subsoil plough should be an implement in common use, 

 instead of being a mere curiosity, as it is at present. It is a serious 

 defect in our California husbandry that so many fiirmers are in the habit 

 of skinning their land an inch or two deep, as if to avoid the primeval 

 curse, (Gen. iii, 19,) until the impacted subsoil becomes impervious to the 

 rains and to the rootlets of the young grain, and the Sheriff is ready to 

 turn many of them out of doors. Indifferent culture and rude hus- 



