rate. Other conditions being equal, it is quite desirable that a soil should 

 allow water to pass through it slowly, holding moisture the greatest length 

 ot time within the reach of plant roots. There is a wide diflference in 

 the power of different types of loose soils to retain moisture. For this 

 reason careful observation should be made when cultivation is done with 

 the object in view of retaining moisture. It would seem then that in order 

 (o successfully manage. the soils of this or any other State, the operator 

 should have a pretty thorough idea of the physical structure of the soil 

 of his farm. He should have some working idea of how the soil par- 

 ticles are broken down and made available food for plants. The fact 

 should be kept in mind that the soil is not only a storehouse for plant food, 

 but that it is a laboratory in which this food is prepared for the use of 

 plants, and any agency that makes work in that laboratory more effective 

 is an agency for increased returns. The facts seem to indicate then that 

 the more one would know concerning his soil the more he must study its 

 physical aspect, always keeping in mind, however, the chemical side. — 

 F. S. Johnston, Purdue University, Indiana. 



THE FARM AS A LABORATORY OF NATURE. 



Farming is at once the simplest art and the most complex science. 

 I'his paradox rests upon th^ facts that nature is prodigal in her gifts 

 to man, and that she holds the secrets of her methods so closely that with 

 the lapse of centuries they are as yet but dimly disclosed. The savage 

 is content to take the gifts he finds awaiting his hand, and through untold 

 generations his ancestors found them sufficient to their simple needs. 

 As he advanced, his efforts were of the simplest sort — the domestication 

 of animals, the propagation of his food plants, and the repression of 

 their ienemies. 



The simplest agricultural operations may be performed without 

 tools, the naked hands and feet being suft'icient materially to assist in 

 reaching the desired results. But little intelligence is required, beyond 

 a knowledge of the order of nature in the broad lines involved. Even 

 with the advent of simple implements and animal power the art of tillage 

 remained one easily acquired. There is indeed some foundation for the 

 saying, "Anybody can farm." With a propitious season anybody can 

 get something of a crop ; he must, in fact, be very successful as a 

 blunderer in oi^der totally to defeat the beneficent operations of sunshine 

 and rain, air and earth, working out the salvation of living things. 



But while it is true that anybody can farm, it is true only because 



