PLOWS AND PLOWING, 289 



evaporating the water ; hence we should stir the soil deep that the 

 water may pass freely down into the soil. An excess of moisture 

 is counteracted by deep plowing, an excess of dryness is prevented 

 by the same deep tillage. Therefore, by whatever light we view 

 it, — whatever arguments we bring to bear upon it, we arrive at 

 the same conclusion — deep and thorough tillage. The questions 

 here arise, "Do practical results agree with scientific conclusions? 

 Is not science at fault, and is not this the cause of the radically 

 different opinions entertained by practical farmers?" True prac- 

 tice corresponds to the highest science — it is true science put into 

 practice. They walk hand in hand and never disagree. 



All soils are not equally benefitted by deep plowing. Moist, fine, 

 compact soils, lying ou a hard, impervious subsoil, must be worked 

 deeply and thoroughly, if we would reap remunerative harvests. 

 Soils naturally loose and porous, having a porous subsoil which 

 allows any excess of water to pass readily through it, and also al- 

 luvial soils which are of the same nature to any depth which the 

 roots of plants naturally penetrate, are not equally benefitted with 

 the soils first named, by the same deep tillage. But even sucli 

 soils are rendered more sure to jneld bountifully, through a 

 series of years by the labor bestowed upon them, when worked 

 deep, than they are when the surface only is skimmed. They are 

 vastly better prepai-ed to resist the severe droughts which every 

 year visit some portion of our country, and they are also better 

 prepared to contribute their mineral elements to the growing plant. 

 A young man from the East emigrated to one of the new States of 

 the West, carrying with him some ideas about farming learned here- 

 in New England. He thought, instead of merely skimming the- 

 surface with his plow he would give his wheat a good mellow bed 

 to grow in, and therefore let his plow down into the soil. The con- - 

 sequence was he lost a large portion of his crop from overgrowth. 

 He rendered the fertilizing elements of the soil too easily available 

 by deep tillage. 



Nearly all agricultural writers when discussing this subject, con- 

 clude by saying that the soil must be "gradually deepened " — that 

 "it will not answer to turn up a large amount of soil that was never 

 before stirred, all at one time." This maybe so if you are making 

 a soil, and if the extra depth turned up be a lifeless, infertile sub- 

 soil. Where the soil is already deep and you are only delving 

 deeper into a lower stratum of hitherto unworked, fertile soil, there 

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