138 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



So an anah-sis may be set aside as a source of no information as 

 to the productive condition of our soils. How can it be done ? It 

 can be done by the plant, and in no other way : and that question 

 can be determined by you just as \\v\\ as by the president of an 

 agricultural college. You set a plant in the soil and that plant will 

 tell you whether it can get any food there or not, and there is no 

 other way known to man. This is being done by many individuals. 

 Experiments are being repeated all over the country. 



Question. May not all the properties necessary to the production 

 of a plant be present in a soil and still the soil be infertile? 



Sec. GiLBKKT. If they are not in this soluble condition that I 

 spoke of, the soil will be just as infertile as though the material was 

 not existing in the soil. Also a soil may be full of water, when 

 plants will not grow. A plant cannot grow without a proper degree 

 of heat, and heat will not penetrate into a soil when it is saturated 

 with water. That water must be either drained olf or evaporated 

 before a sufficient amount of heat can penetrate into and be retained 

 by the soil to produce agricultural plants. Hence the necessity' of 

 taking all excess of water out of the soil. 



Question. Are not some of our soils so sandy and porous that 

 they will not retain these ingredients when they arc applied? 



Sec. Gilbert. There is but little danger of leaching : yet there 

 is a possible loss in that direction. With a sandy soil of coarse 

 texture and a gravelly sub-soil, admitting of complete and quick 

 drainage, the percolation down through mav possibl}- cany witii it a 

 certain amount of plant food. Hence it becomes necessary to 

 handle different soils in a different manner. The manuring and 

 cropping of one of these sandy soils with a light sub-soil is just as 

 diffei'ent a piece of farming from the handling of a clayey soil as 

 the profession of politics is different from that of an agricultural 

 talker. You manure, for instance, a coarse, sandy soil with a heavy 

 application of green barn manure, the fertilizing elements of which, 

 you know, are in an insoluble state : you work it deeply into the 

 soil ; the plant food in the manure becomes soluble slowly. You 

 have no crop on that soil excepting a few months in the year, and 

 when the crop isn't there to take up this material as it is rendered 

 soluble, the rains falling upon the surface and working down i-apidl^- 

 through it will just as certainly carrv sinne of the plant food with it 

 as the water goes through. AVith a clave}' soil it is different. In a 

 clayey soil the water is mostly evaporated from the surface, the 



