The Texture of the Soil. 



The other day I secured one sample of soil from a very hard 

 clay knoll upon which beans had been planted but in which they 

 were almost unable to germinate, another sample from a contigu- 

 ous soil in which beans were growing luxuriantly, and as a third 

 sample, I chipped a piece of rock off my house, which is built of 

 stone of the neighborhood. All of these samples were taken to 

 the chemist, Mr. Cavanaugh, for analysis. The area from which I 

 took the hard and unproductive clay (Sample I.), is shown in Fig, 

 136. The reader will not be able, I think, to discover any bean 

 plants upon it, although the seed was drilled into it at the same 

 time as in the soil which furnished Sample II. Fig. 137 shows 

 the area from which Sample II. was taken. This area is only 

 twenty feet removed from the other, and is of the same original 

 formation, but it differs in being in a slight depression or " draw " 

 and the soil is in a fairly fine degree of division. It is really a 

 good bean soil. The samples of soil which were actually taken 

 to the chemist are shown in Fig. 138. The rock (Sample III.) 

 was hard limestone, known to geologists as the Tully formation. 



The chemist reports as follows: 



I. Unproductive clay 



II. Good bean land . . , 



in. Lime rock 



Organic 

 matter. 



3.19 

 5.45 



In other words, the chemist says that the poorer soil — the one 

 upon which I cannot grow beans — is the richer in mineral plant 

 food, and that the rock contains a most abundant supply of pot- 

 ash and about half as much phosphoric acid as the good bean soil. 



All this, after all, is not surprising, when we come to think of 



