298 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



(lucstiou up as to her trouble, j'ou had better kill her and bury the 

 body, than to allow her to remain in the flock. Better kill one sick 

 fowl than to lose a dozen. I could talk to you for some time upon 

 diseases, but will not encroach upon your good nature any longer, so 

 thanking you for your kind and considerate attention, I shall close. 



MAINTENANCE OF SOIL FEKTILITY THE BASE OF SUCCESS- 

 FUL FAKM OPERATIONS. 



BY J. T. CAMPBELL, Bartstown, Pa. 



READ AT DICKSONBURG INSTITUTE, CRAWFORD CO., JAN. 11, IDOl. 



Soil fertility, the base of successful farm operations, is to every 

 thoughful farmer an axiom. Let us not then stop to consider the 

 why but proceed to the more important phase of the subject. 



You ask what constitutes a fertile soil? This question is by no 

 means an easy one to answer. If we say a soil is fertile when it 

 contains a plentiful supply of the constituents which form the plant 

 food our answer will be incomplete. Indeed chemical analysis shows 

 that many unproductive soils contain large quantities of plant food. 

 The fertility of a soil must, therefore, evidently depend, both on its 

 physical condition and on its chemical composition. Soil fertility 

 in all its bearings is still very imj^erfectly understood even by the 

 most learned experimenters. Climate, latitude, altitude and ex- 

 posure all exert an influence on the fertility of the soil. These we 

 shall not stop to consider. 



The fertility of the soil may be said to depend upon the primary 

 conditions, namely: The physical, the chemical, the biological. 

 From the days of Jethro TuU the physical properties of a soil have 

 been regarded as having an im]3ortant bearing on its fertility. Every 

 one has observed that soils differ widely in their mechanical nature. 

 One of the most imijortant physical properties of a soil is its power 

 of absorbing water. The water absorbing power of a soil depends 

 upon two things, first, the predominance of its approximate consjtit- 

 uents, namely, sand, clay, humus, etc.; second, on the fineness of the 

 soil particles. 



First, then, with regard to the absorptive power of sand, clay, and 

 humus. Of these, sand possesses this power to the least extent, clay 

 to a greater extent and humus most of all. Therefore we conclude 

 ihat the more sandy a soil is the less will be its power of absorbing 

 water. This is the principal reason why a very sandy soil is gen- 

 erally an unproductive one. 



