270 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



cles which it may contain will be brought into action. Thus we 

 frequently see fields which were to all appearance exhausted be- 

 come exceedingly fertile after being carefully fallowed, even though 

 they had not received any additional supply of manure." I think 

 the importance of fine pulverization of the soil is not sufficiently 

 understood. When the delicate fibrous roots of any crop have to 

 make their way through a hard and dry mass of baked earth, or at 

 best among coarsely broken clods, they must grow and receive 

 nourishment with great difficulty, when compared with the exten- 

 sion of the same roots through a finely pulverized bed of eai-th 

 favoring their full growth. 



In a discussion at the New York State fair, held at Utica, on the 

 management of pasture lands, Mr. A. L. Fish, said "To merely 

 invert the sod and take off a crop, then turn it back and strip it 

 again, and so on through the popular rotation, then seed sparsely 

 with one or two kinds of grasses, without regard to depth and 

 thorough pulverization, I do not accept as judicious cultivation. 

 The lay and texture of land is so unlike in different localities that 

 it would be difficult to adopt a rule for general practice without 

 broad exceptions ; some soils requiring to be pulverized and pack- 

 ed to make them less porous, others to be pulverized and not pack- 

 ed to leave them more permeable. All soils must be fine to receive 

 full benefit from the circulating elements passing through them. 

 No seeds will germinate or grass roots grow without their presence, 

 which is good proof that they contain the life-giving principle. 

 The fact that air and water will grow plants without earth, but 

 earth will not without them, is also good proof that the soil is only 

 a repository for the food of plants, where it is held in a physical 

 medium by a mechanical faculty of the soil. If we accept the 

 theory as sound that a small amount of the inorganic portion of 

 the soil enters into the bulk of growing plants we must look for a 

 mechanical faculty in the soil, as a base of its productiveness ; 

 whatever we recognize as a vital, sustaining principle in the soil, 

 it behooves us as farmers to see to it that it is developed in the 

 soil we occupy. To make the point I wish to impress, I will as- 

 sume that all physical growth is from minute particles of organic 

 matter contained in the circulating elements which attach by con- 

 tact with surfaces adapted to retain and absorb them into a physi- 

 cal medium. Tlie soil I will say is a physical medium, in which 

 organic matter in all its minutiie is held by a mechanical faculty, 

 for decomposition and chemical combination. When we consider 



