SUBDUING THE LAND 137 



made -deeper. In prairie breaking the rolling coulter 

 is often preferred; in timber breaking the standing 

 coulter is generally found more satisfactory. Timber 

 lands are plowed 4 to 7 inches deep. Holes left by the 

 removal of stumps should be first leveled up. The Slush 

 Scraper, the Fresno Scraper, or even the Reversible 

 Road Machine will do this work in many cases much 

 more expeditiously than it can be done by hand. 



Mixing sand into clay soils, or mixing clay or muck 

 into sandy soils, is done in some cases, but only where 

 the benefit is very large, so as to repay the cost of 

 high-priced labor. Spreading sand over marshes de- 

 signed for cranberries, has been found to pay, where 

 the conditions are such that this greatly increases the 

 yields of the cranberries. And in rare cases mucky 

 lands which were too wet for tame grasses, as beside a 

 stream, have been made into very productive soils by 

 the addition of a thin coating of sand. With modern 

 machinery, earth may be moved 

 much more cheaply than for- 

 merly, and the ameliorating of 

 inhospitable soils may eventu- 

 ally become more common, 

 though now good lands are so 

 low in price that only for small 

 areas, and for very especial pur- 

 pose, will it pay to haul heavy FIgure 

 earthy materials to mix with the with breaker bottoms ' 

 soil. Carting dried peat into barns or into manure cellars, 

 or mixing it directly into the compost heaps, is often 

 profitable, as it decomposes there and aids in conserv- 

 ing the fertilizing constituents of the vegetable manures, 

 and when placed on the land adds somewhat to the 

 humus-making substances. 



Alkali Soils. One of the troublesome and but par- 

 tially solved problems is the treatment of soils which 



