44 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



the amount of the black humus that made the soil originally productive, and 

 gradually it was used up. The minute organisms, whose life is spent, in the 

 transformation of this organic matter into forms adapted to the use of crops, 

 perish by reason of the burning up of the humus. There is nothing for them 

 to work upon. The soil runs together and bakes under the influence of the 

 rains, and rapidly dries out, so that there is a lack of moisture for the solu- 

 tion of the plant food it contains. The oxidizing influence of the air fails to 

 penetrate the compact soil, and though it still contains all the plant food 

 needed for big crops, it becomes an unproductive soil because plants can no 

 longer get what the soil has for them in abundance. It is a dead soil. And 

 all over the land one sees these dead soils, made so not only by the using up 

 of the humus but by the settling of the soil into a sour mass ; where formerly 

 it hardly needed drainage, now it is sour, not from lack of food but from 

 lack of the ability of the air to penetrate and mellow it. That humus may 

 not have had in it nearly the amount of plant food that still remains in the 

 soil, but it was the preservative agent in the soil, the only thing that kept 

 life there, and its absence means death to soil and crops. One of the most 

 thoughtless advocates of commercial fertilizers some time ago said in print: 

 "Give humus a rest, we can get along without it if we have plenty of soluble 

 fertilizers for our crops." All over the country, and especially 

 in the South, farmers have been giving humus a rest, and 

 their lands have become less and less productive, notwithstanding 

 the millions of dollars' worth of commercial fertilizers they use 

 upon them in the vain hope that they will take the place of permanent fer- 

 tility. If the worn soils are ever to be redeemed it must be through the get- 

 ting back there of that bacterial life that carries on the changes in organic 

 decay, and these can only exist when there is this organic decay present. A 

 soil filled with bacterial life is really a living soil and a fertile one, while one 

 without it will always be less productive. It will be less productive, not only 

 by reason of the absence of the organisms that release nitrogen in the soil, but 

 by reason of its smaller power to retain moisture and heat and to dissolve the 

 plant foods applied in the fertilizers. Last summer we applied a dressing of 

 fertilizer to a crop of sweet potatoes on some of this dead land. .The summer 

 was extremely dry, and when the potatoes were dug the crop was only such as 

 the soil would have made alone, for the fertilizer was lying there as dry as 

 when applied. On another piece where the humus had been to some extent 

 restored, the fertilizer acted well, simply because there was moisture retained 

 there to dissolve it, and the plants got it. If there were no living organisms 

 to help us in this humus, its mechanical effect would alone give it sufficient 

 value to warrant every effort to retain and increase it. 



