IMPROVEMENT OF SOILS. 269 



he may have clear conceptions of order and fitness, he may not 

 carry learning into the field, but he carries brains. It is mind mixed 

 with soil that makes the prize farm. Intelligence is the best fer- 

 tilizer. Agriculture and all useful arts progress so fast, and so far, 

 as man advances. Successful tillage is an index of civilization, it 

 is the record of human progress. 



But to come more directly to my subject. Improvement of Soils 

 TO BE Accomplished by Repeated Ploughixg. There is a wide dif- 

 ference between the use of the plough in American and European 

 farming. This diiference is due to the fact that the large amount 

 of humus in our virgin soil made the fallow unnecessary and es- 

 tablished a practice of single ploughing, which continued long after 

 the destruction of this humus. The object of repeated ploughing 

 is to prepare the soil for future crops. Its purpose is to enrich the 

 soil by enabling it to absorb the fertilizing gases from the air, by 

 destroying weeds, and by thorough pulverizing to allow the roots 

 to grow so as to insure a good crop. The Romans adopted the 

 naked fallow to the extent of six or seven ploughings, and so do 

 some European farmers at the present day ; their object is to deep- 

 en the soil, as well as to prepare it for a crop. The effects of such 

 ploughing on the soil is thus stated by Thaer : "A simple plough- 

 ing in spring or autumn certainly will turn up and break the sur- 

 face of the land, but it will not divide it sufficiently to break the 

 clods and reduce them to loose earth. The soil when clodded to- 

 gether soon becomes hardened into compact masses, when it is 

 covered without being broken, and when exposed to the heat of the 

 sun becomes as hard as tile. Lands when sufiered to acquire this 

 state are not productive because the greater part of plants having 

 fibrous roots are unable to penetrate those clods, and consequently 

 are forced to turn around them, and the power of vegetation con- 

 tained in that portion of the ground which they occupy is thei'efore 

 wholly lost. There is scarcely any means by which these clods 

 can be broken except by continued fallowing during the whole of 

 the season, the effect of which is to bring them all successively to 

 the surface, where they may be exposed to the action of the at- 

 mosphere, and having imbibed moisture and become softened, they 

 may be broken by the harrow and other implements. If this pro- 

 cess can be continued for one season, and care be taken that each 

 operation shall be pei-formed when the soil possesses the proper 

 degree of humidity, the field will be transformed into a homogen- 

 eous, light, loose powder, and the nutritive and fertilizing parti- 



