88 THE AJMERICAN BOTANIST. 



ried down and deposited in the root. Having- thus got its 

 food down into the soil out of harm's way, the young stem 

 begins to grow from the top of the root pushing apart the base 

 of the long petiole to do so. The process is illustrated in the 

 Plant World for May. 



Sterilizing the Soil. — Every spring I bum up dried 

 leaves, brush from pruning and other litter of the kind, on the 

 ground which is afterwards spaded and seeded down. It has 

 been noticed that the plants were most luxuriant at the spots 

 where the fire was made. The simple fact of fertilization by 

 the plant ashes alone was found by experiment to be insufficient 

 to account for the difference, because hoeing off the ashes and 

 spading them in in another place did not cause quite so vigor- 

 ous a plant growth. Having in mind, numerous experiments 

 as to sterilizing soils before seeding down, which have recently 

 been recorded, the experiment was tried of spreading the litter 

 so far as might be over the major part of the garden plot, be- 

 fore burning it up. That v/as tried this spring with veiT good 

 results. It is noticeable that wherever the fire burned fiercest 

 or longest, the soil appears more fertile, though in all other re- 

 spects the treatment was uniform. The results are almost un- 

 expected for it seems scarcely possible that a sterilizing effect 

 could have extended as deeply as the length of a spade blade, 

 yet after burning over the soil was turned up by spading- to that 

 depth. Our soil is very sandy, nnd in the garden plot only 

 shows humus to the depth to v,'hich it has been cutivated by 

 digging in manure, leaf mould, etc. Below that the sandy 

 character is so pronounced that our builders (masons, etc.) 

 seldom if ever haul sand for their mortar, but can almost every 

 where, dig up all the sand they may need for ordinary work. 

 — Ehvyn Waller, Morristozmi, N. J. 



