98 THE AMERICAN FARMER. 



in time of drought, while the roots also can penetrate deeper in search of the requisite amount 

 of water. 



There may be other instances where the breaking up of the subsoil would be a positive 

 injury to crops, such as certain loams or any kind of leachy soil, with a coarse, sandy sub- 

 soil that would, if undisturbed, form to a certain extent by its compactness, a barrier to the 

 rapid escape of water and fertilizing properties that would otherwise wash through it and be 

 wasted. It is easy to see that the breaking up of such a subsoil would be very hazardous to 

 crops, and the fertilizing elements contained in the surface-soil capable of being washed out 

 by heavy rains. On old fields that may have a shallow surface-soil, and have been plowed to 

 a certain depth for a succession of years, and never reaching beyond that depth, or, on certain 

 soils formed from the fine sediment of a river, a hard subsoil is often found which seems to 

 resemble hard-pan in compactness, and which is evidently rendered so in a great measure by 

 the plow always going to a certain depth. Such soils are materially benefited by breaking 

 through this hard crust with a subsoil plow. 



STUBBLE PLOW. 



One of the first and most important things for every owner of a farm to ascertain 

 aside from the nature of the surface-soil is the character and value of the subsoil under 

 lying his land. In many instances it will prove of little value, and should either be 

 left undisturbed, or loosened simply for the purpose of giving greater capacity for supplying 

 moisture, according to the conditions and nature of the soil, as we have previously stated. 

 In other cases, the subsoil has been known to materially increase the value of the agricul 

 tural soil when mixed with it, but as we have before stated, it should be done very cau 

 tiously and gradually, accompanied with a mixture of manure each year. 



A recent authentic writer gives the following striking instance of benefits derived from 

 a mixture of the surface and subsoils: 



&quot; An open ditch two feet deep was cut through a portion of a field, and the excavated 

 subsoil scattered to the distance of a rod on each side. The field was afterwards sown with 

 wheat, the season for which was so unfavorable that the field averaged only five bushels per 

 acre, except where the subsoil from the ditch had been scattered. Here the product was 

 estimated at no less than twenty bushels per acre. It would have paid well to dig up enough 

 of the subsoil to scatter over the whole field. A farmer in one of the wheat-growing regions 

 informed us that he increased his wheat ten bushels per acre by running the plow two inches 

 deeper than it had ever gone before, throwing up and intermixing a small portion of the subsoil.&quot; 



