THE NEW EARTH 



four or five days without any lime in its food. 

 Hour by hour the plant, in its blind, insensate, 

 ever-persistent way, searches for the missing 

 food, and hour by hour, baffled in its search, it 

 steadily fails. At last, when five days have 

 passed, a meal of the long-needed lime is 

 served, and, in less than five hours' time, the 

 dying plant is restored to life and soon to 

 normal health. 



The soil has been divided into various arbi- 

 trary classes according to the size of the parti- 

 cles, among these divisions being medium sand, 

 fine sand, very fine sand, silt, fine silt and clay. 

 Prof. Harry Snyder, in his book on "Soils and 

 Fertilizers," distributes the soil particles for 

 various crops as follows: 



"Potato and early garden truck, sixty per 

 cent medium sand, twenty to twenty-five per 

 cent silt, five per cent clay. 



"General truck and fruit soils, not more than 

 forty per cent sand, ten to fifteen per cent 

 clay, forty to forty-five per cent silt. 



"Corn soils, forty to forty-five per cent 

 medium and fine sand, fifteen per cent clay, 

 forty per cent silt ; the strongest type of corn 

 soils having the proper mechanical composition 



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