DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 409 



and practically all the excretory matter has been returned to 

 the soil. Some time we are going to get back to that. One 

 thing that has helped Germany is that they have had to put the 

 sewage on the land instead of allowing it to go out to the ocean 

 as they do in Chicago. 



Ques. Don't you think we are getting to know more about 

 bacteria and getting more from that? 



Ans. We have learned pretty well the theory of bacterial 

 action upon nitrogen, and if we live long enough I shall be 

 greatly surprised if we do not see its action upon phosphoric 

 acid and potash, perhaps within 20 or 25 years. That is going 

 to help us enormously. When I first began to work in the 

 experiment station work we regarded the soil as dead, inert 

 matter and we went right ahead on all our nitrogen problems 

 from the chemical standpoint. But we are learning and today 

 the farmer talks glibly about phosphoric acid, potash and nitro- 

 gen ; but the thing that is most important in the soil the farmer 

 has not yet grasped, — that the soil is full of living organisms, 

 [t is not a dead thing at all, and we are just beginning to put 

 into practice some things the biologists and bacteriologists are 

 finding out relative to nitrogen, etc. 



Ques. Do you recomm.end plowing any deeper on account of 

 the deficiency of potash? 



Ans. I would plow every year a half an inch or an inch 

 deeper than the year before until I got down where I could not 

 plow any deeper. Some men talk about plowing six or seven 

 inches deep and they do not own a foot rule or they would find 

 that they were not plowing as deep as that. 



Ques. How much can you increase the depth of your plow- 

 ing each year without injuring the germination? 



Ans. That depends largely on your soil, but on general prin- 

 ciples I would not go more than one-half an inch deeper than 

 the preceding year. 



Ques. What is the limit? Suppose a man has a machine so 

 that he can plow 12 inches deep. Can he ever go too deep? 



Ans. I do not think there is any machine that will push 

 down too deep. Subsoil plowing has always paid. Of course 

 it is no use to plow 12 inches deep and use a crop that does not 

 feed more than three inches deep, but for certain crops 12 inches 

 '^s not too deep. 



