1917] AGRICULTURE IN WAR-TIME. 217 
expensive work, but there is no farm operation that pays better in the 
long run. Wherever needed and funds permit, our farmers have been 
urged to put in drains. 
TILLAGE.—The soil of our fields naturally settles down and runs 
together into a more or less compact mass, due largely to rains, and it is 
thus rendered unfavourable for seed germination and the easy extension 
of the root system of the crop. This condition must be ameliorated 
by ploughing, sub-soiling, the use of the disc, spring tooth and smoothing 
harrows and the roller. By these implements the soil is opened up and 
reduced again to a fine condition; it is aerated and warmed and made 
capable of holding moisture in a form available for the crop nutrition, 
known technically as film water. A ‘‘fine’”’ seed bed is half the battle 
and therefore the preparation of the soil is of paramount importance; 
as the crop grows it needs a due supply of moisture—for all the food 
that it takes in from the soil must be in the form of a solution—and it is 
good tillage and subsequent surface cultivation that conserves this 
necessary moisture. 
These observations will have made it clear that the soil, in addition 
to supplying plant food, must form a comfortable means for the support 
of the plant, a comfortable home in which the crop can live and thrive. 
It must be well aerated, moist and warm. Tillage is a generic term to 
include all those mechanical operations that bring about this comfortable 
condition, commonly known as good tilth. We are fortunate in this 
country in having many excellent farm implements for the tilling of the 
soil, implements specially adapted for their particular work. In this 
connection we look hopefully in the near future to the perfection of 
the motor plough, which will enable the farmer not only to cheapen, 
extend and improve his tillage but to take better advantage of those 
short periods, altogether too short in some seasons, when the heavier 
soils are in the right condition for working, neither too wet nor too dry. 
Drainage and good tillage mean time, labour and expense, but they 
are indispensable for maximum crop production; there is nothing we can 
add to the soil that can take the place of its thorough preparation. 
FARM MANURES. 
In the whole economy of farming there is no subject of greater, of 
more vital importance than that of manure and manuring. To-night 
we can only touch upon some of its more salient features. 
Obviously the amount of plant food in the soil which is present in a 
more or less available form is a prime factor in determining crop yields; 
therefore in this campaign we are urging our farmers to take every 
rational, economic means to increase its store. To this end farm manures 
