MANUAL FOR SUGAR GROWERS. 53 



of ploughing or forking to assist in undoing the 

 harm done by compressing the soil and thus de- 

 stroying its good condition. 



The practice of burning the trash has been advo- 

 cated and followed by some planters, under the im- 

 pression that this renders the mineral constituents 

 of the trash available as plant-food, and more partic- 

 ularly the potash. A moment's thought will show the 

 fallacy of such a proceeding. The mineral constitu- 

 ents are present in the trash whether it is burned or 

 no — the act of burning cannot surely be credited 

 with creating the potash, even by anyone ignorant 

 even of the simplest of scientific laws. If the trash 

 decay in the ground, as it will speedily do, the min- 

 eral matters are then as available as plant-food as if 

 the trash had been burned ; nay, more so, for owing 

 to the large proportion of silica present in cane-trash 

 much of the potash is rendered insoluble by fusion 

 with the silica to form a kind of glass ; the phos- 

 phates, too, are rendered less soluble and so less 

 active by burning. But the loss of the vegetable 

 matter by burning is of the greatest consequence. 

 The importance of vegetable matter in the soil has 

 been so frequently insisted on in the foregoing 

 pages as to require no repetition here. Sometimes, 

 however, if the fields are badly infested with animal 

 or vegetable parasites or diseases, it may be desir- 

 able to burn the trash in order to kill the harmful 

 plant or animal (as various kinds of fungus, termites, 

 mole -crickets, etc.), but this is evidently quite an- 

 other question. Under certain circumstances it 

 may be w^orth while to suffer some loss by burning 



