132 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



have any harvest at all?" Your pastures were dried up entirely; your 

 meadows had burned white, and your fields generally looked almost bar- 

 ren. When the harvest was reached in July and August, there was a sur- 

 prise for the wise. We never had such a harvest before. We never 

 harvested such crops of oats, and corn, and potatoes as this year. 



Now what lessons are we to learn from that condition of things? In 

 the first place, our ground was dry, as I said before, when we put in ouf 

 crops. The root of every plant struck straight down into the ground, and 

 when the dry, hot winds of June swept over the fields, those roots were 

 way down below, bringing up the material necessary to produce the crop. 

 It could not produce long straw, it could not produce tall corn, but it did 

 produce heavy ears. Now we cannot change the condition of things, you 

 say, and make the same conditions occur next year. When there come 

 floods of rain, you cannot roll away the clouds, and let down the sun- 

 shine, and dry up the earth, any more than you can call down showers 

 when it is dry. 



No, you need not do this. But you can see that the water that does 

 come is taken care of. This is one of the most important points. Just 

 to please myself and to illustrate for some others, I conducted a very 

 interesting experiment. I took two panes of glass and put them about 

 a half inch apart. I filled the space with garden soil, and then planted 

 seeds — planted grain, oats and radishes. I planted them so that we 

 could watch the growth of the roots and see the results. I made two of 

 these, and the one I wet, soaking wet, and the other was so dry it was 

 almost impossible for the seeds to germinate. The one would represent 

 the soaked ground at seed time, and the other the ground as it was last 

 spring. After four days, I gave the dry one what would equal a half 

 inch rainfall, on the surface. After that, as they were kept close by the 

 stove, the wood would get dry, and I would occasionally set it into water 

 so that the wood would not dry out the soil, but would leave it in its 

 natural condition and perhaps make a very little rising of water by capil- 

 lary attraction in the plants. 



What was the result? The plants in the dry earth came up in about 

 half the time of those in the wet earth; that was a surprising thing to 

 me. The plants in the dry earth shot down one straight root, and when 

 the top was broken, and the plant was just beginning to come out, I could 

 see three or four inches of the tap root running as straight down as a 

 plumb line. There was a lesson to me right away. I did not know before 

 that our corn and oats sent down that tap root so far into the ground. 

 What were the other plants doing? A little feeble root struck out this 

 way, and one that way; the top tried to go up, and finally, three days 

 later than the dry one, the wet one came up. In eighteen days I had fine 

 healthy plants in the dry earth; they had grown four inches high and 

 were dark and healthy. The others were two inches high, spindling and 

 looked unhealthy. 



There wns a lesson, and it reminded me of so many fields I had seen in 

 the spring; the crops were way back and looked spindling and bad. But 

 you see, by and by, when the root gets through the sod, the corn will take 

 on color and look better, and there will be a good crop after all. And I 

 leave it to you as to which plant was in the best condition to stand a 

 drouth, of the two, and produce a good crop. The lesson I wish to draw 



