J^J UK A ;< v 



TJN1VKKSITY OF 



CAIJFORN1A. 



PEEPAEATIOK OF THE SOIL. 



Lsr preparing the ground for corn, the subject re- 

 quiring the farmer's earliest and most careful atten- 

 tion is disintegration. To impart to the soil, before 

 planting, a suitable tilth and mellowness, by mechani- 

 cal processes, is an indispensable preliminary. The 

 means of doing this, and the methods practised, are 

 various, and of different degrees of merit ; but the 

 amount of disintegration they are capable of impart- 

 ing is the great and leading consideration. The in- 

 strument, or the practice that will most completely 

 effect the pulverization of the soil, carrying the sub- 

 division of its particles nearest to the point of ulti- 

 mate possibility, is the one to be adopted by the cul- 

 tivator. 



In every branch of husbandry, yet in none per- 

 haps so much as in corn culture, the thorough re- 

 duction of the earth by mechanical division and 

 subdivision is a matter of primary and fundamental 

 importance. 



There are, it is true, exceptional cases requiring a 



