130 THE WHEAT CULTUR*ST. 



wheat once in five or six years, wliile they cannot be 

 set down as good wheat soils ; and they cannot be very 

 much improved for growing wheat, unless a vast amount 

 of clay were thoroughly mingled with the soil. 



Heavy, slippery clay soils abound in wheat-producing 

 material. Therefore, such soils will not be exhausted 

 of their fertility as soon as those will where there is 

 but a small proportion of clay, or no clay at all. 



On some soils, where sand predominates, wheat 

 would not grow heavy enough to pay the expense of 

 harvesting it. And the same is true of soils where allu- 

 vion constitutes the large proportion of the soil. A 

 sandy soil will furnish silica enough to form a good, 

 stiff straw, while a mucky soil will produce a slender 

 and soft straw, which will fall down before the grain 

 has matured. 



The best soil for wheat is a soil in which the pre- 

 dominating characteristics are clay and loam, having 

 neither too much of one nor too little of the other. 

 The lighter loam soils, and such alluvions as have been 

 brought from clayey localities, will often produce boun- 

 tiful crops of excellent wheat ; and sometimes a mucky 

 soil will yield a fair crop of this kind of grain. But 

 their fertility for wheat will soon be exhausted. Cal- 

 careous clays, gravelly clays, aluminous clays, as well 

 as many soils that are a mixture of all these just named, 

 with good management — cultivating, manuring, and 

 draining — will, almost always, yield fair crops of 

 wheat. 



K. L. Allen, in the American Farmer's Book, says : 

 " Wheat is partial to a well-prepared clay or a heavy 

 loam ; and this is improved when it contains, either nat- 

 urally or artificially, a large proportion of lime. Many 



