Winter Meeting. 



389 



siclercd a fine fruit soil, and a third a pine ridge day that is considered 

 to be practically unproductive. 



PLANT FOOD PER ACRE IN THE SURFACE SOIL TO A DEPTH OF 7 INCHES. 



SUBSOIL. TO A DEPTH OF 30 INCHES. 



There is a striking difference in the quantities of these elements of 

 plant food contained in these soils, and particularly between the so- 

 called corn land and the pine ridge. At the same time, there is sufficient 

 plant food within the first seven inches of this pine ridge to produce 15 

 crops of apples of 500 bushels per acre, besides furnishing the material 

 necessary to grow the trees. In other words, while there is sufficient 

 plant food in even the poorest of these soils to make a man rich in the 

 orchard business if he could only get it out, the difficulty is that it is 

 so locked up and is rendered available so very slowly that the orchardist 

 would be unable to wait for his trees to grow or bear. 



Clearly the clay soil of the College Farm, judged by its content 

 of plant food, is far superior to any of the others. We might safely 

 conclude from this table that the soil would be the best of the three 

 for general agricultural purposes, but experience has abundantly demon- 

 strated that this is a poor orchard land on account of its very close 

 texture and because it is not well aerated beyond the first few inches 

 of the surface. 



The practical orchardist would choose the red soil, because it has 

 been found that soils of this color, generally speaking, have proven 

 tc be good orchard lands, i. e., trees on such soils make a good growth, 

 reach an old age, and are uniformly fruitful. So far as we know, 

 this is not due, as was formerly supposed, to the presence of this red 

 oxide of iron, this iron simply indicating that the soil is open and 

 porous, and furthermore that it is not a leached soil. 



