CAMPBELL'S SOIL CULTURE MANUAL 307 



had been incontrovertibly demonstrated. Fortunately for 

 the farmers of Brown county, they realized that it would 

 be impossible for them to plow all their wheat land in the 

 spring in time to get their seeding done: but everyone re- 

 duced the amount of fall plowing to its lowest possible 

 terms. Never before or since was the percentage of wheat 

 land in that neighborhood plowed in the spring so great.- 

 When harvest time came, everyone had the same result: 

 the crop was all but a total failure on the land that had 

 been plowed in the spring; but that plowed the preceding 

 fall returned a good yield. 



Campbell, the man from Vermont, where people are 

 born asking questions, and never outgrow the habit, was 

 not discouraged. He was willing to admit, with his neigh- 

 bors, that the whole secret of the production of good crops 

 did not lie in the time of plowing. Where he differed from 

 his neighbors was in his refusal to believe that the secret 

 vas past finding out. 



Even at that early stage of his investigations, he be- 

 lieved it possible to conserve in the soil sufficient moisture 

 to mature a crop, even in years of extreme drouth such as 

 brought disaster to the farmers of the plains with discour- 

 aging frequency. The problem to be worked out was how 

 to place the soil in the proper physical condition for the 

 reception and storage of moisture. For the reception and 

 ready percolation of moisture, it required no extended train 

 of reasoning to teach him that the soil must be kept loose 

 and porous by thorough cultivation. 



How to keep the moisture there, was a widely different 

 matter. The common expedient was the use of the roller, 

 in 01 ^er to compact the soil and prevent too rapid evapora- 

 tion. Experiment convinced him that this was of little 

 value, because its effects were confined to two or three 



