IMPROVEMENT OF SOILS. 



CHAPTER XXII.' 



IMPROVEMENT OF THE SOIL BY MECHANICAL. 

 METHODS. 



The facts given in preceding chapters afford indubitable 

 proof that the natural capacity of the soil for the produc- 

 tion of farm crops varies so considerably, that the ability 

 of the farmer to grow them profitably is at times very much 

 restrained. Every soil encourages by its natural condition, 

 a kind of vegetation best suited to it, and is unable to pro- 

 duce anything different or better until this natural condi- 

 tion is changed. A knowledge of the laws of vegetable 

 growth, and of the nature of the organic and inorganic ele- 

 ments of it, with the obstacles to the development of these 

 into food for plants, which exist by reason of the unfavor- 

 able physical conditions of the soil, will enable the farmer 

 to take such means as will overcome and remove these ob- 

 stacles and enable the soil to entirely change the character 

 of its products. 



The farmer can change the character of the land itself; 

 he can alter its physical condition, and its chemical consti- 

 tution; and can thus fit it for growing other species of plants 

 than it naturally bears, or if he chooses, can cause the land 

 to produce these with greater luxuriance and in more prof- 

 itable quantity. It is in fact the production of these chan- 

 ges by the exertion of rightly directed labor and skillful 

 management which constitutes the whole art of agriculture, 

 and the laws which control and make possible these changes, 

 comprise the whole science of this art. 



To attain these desirable ends the farmer may drain the 

 wet lands; irrigate dry lands; lighten heavy clays by deep 

 plowing and subsoiling, and the addition of lime, composts, 

 sand, or peat; consolidate light sandy soils by similar 

 methods ; darken the color of light soils by adding composts of 



