No. 7. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 219 



that if you should call ou this man this fall and see his crops, which 

 are as certain to be poor as the sun is to set tonight and rise again 

 tomorrow morning, his excuse for their failure would be either or 

 both "worn out soil," ''bad season." Neither of these can call us 

 untruthful or something less pleasing so it becomes easy to lay all 

 blame there when perhaps it would fit our own shoulders proverbi- 

 ally "like the paper on the wall." If we expect to receive adequate 

 returns from the soil we must begin at the foundation and prepare 

 a seed bed of sufficient depth and of such condition of tilth as to 

 furnish an ideal home for the growing plants which constitute 

 the crop. 



Ther^' is another important reason why we should not lose sight 

 of the fact that our deeds give us a title to the soil vertically as well 

 as horizontally, the latter measured in acres, the former by no unit 

 or standard. The plant food elements of any soil are not confined 

 to the surface soil alone, though some would lead us to believe that 

 they were. We hear and read that there is just so many pounds of 

 potash, just so many pounds of phosphoric acid, and just so many 

 pounds available of each of the plant food elements in an acre of 

 this and that particular soil and that this and that crop use just 

 so many pounds of each in its growth and maturity and removes 

 this amount and that amount when harvested and marketed. It is 

 then figured from this data that in so many years all of this avail- 

 able plant food will have been removed and the soil will be "worn 

 out," "exhausted of plant food," as it were. While I am willing to 

 admit that there is truth in this theory and that it is easy to ex- 

 plain poor yields in this way, I am not willing to admit that it is 

 the whole truth in the economy of crop production. 



There are three important things that those who adhere to this 

 theory either forget, disregard, or overlook. First: They disregard 

 the fundamental theory of a chemical solution. A chemical solu- 

 tion under normal conditions may exist in two conditions, an un- 

 saturated condition, or when it will take into solution more of 

 the solid, and a saturated condition, when no more of the solid 

 will be taken into solution even though it be present. Now, the soil 

 moij^ture from which the plant receives these elements of plant 

 food necessary for its growth is a chemical solution and under 

 normal conditions is saturated, all rock forming minerals being 

 more or less soluble. Again, the development and growth of the 

 plant removes some portion of the plant foods held in this satur- 

 ated solution, the soil moisture, leaving it in the unsaturated con- 

 dition but being in contact with the soil grains, which are made 

 up of minerals containing the plant food elements, and the soil 

 forming forces still acting as they have continued to act through 

 the ages, never having ceased, never resting, always busy, the soil 

 solution soon establishes its chemical equilibrium and maintains 

 itself in the saturated condition. Second: It is too well known to 

 comment that the excreta of waste products of metabolism from 

 animals is poisonous to the same animals. It is not quite so uni- 

 versally known among the people that the excreta material from 

 bacterial life is destructive and poisonous to bacterial life of the 

 same kind and when it comes to the effects of the excreta of 

 plants uxK)ii plant growth and crop production we know little 



