IV.] 



VALUE OF BARE FALLOWS 



127 



In the surface layer there is practically no difference, 

 both having become equally wet by the rains after 

 harvest, but in the lower depths the fallow soils are the 

 wetter, and the differences are less pronounced for the 

 unmanured plot where a small crop had been grown 

 than for the dunged plot with its larger crop. 



The way in which fallowing land is of benefit to 

 the crop, both by making nitrates and particularly by 

 saving water in a dry season, is easily seen in the 

 superior plant always found on the outside rows or 

 edges of an experimental plot divided from the others 

 by a bare path ; on one side the plant has the benefit 

 of fallow ground as well as of extra space, light, and 

 air, and flourishes accordingly. The Lois-Weedon 

 system of husbandry, where the land was divided 

 into alternate 5-foot strips of corn and cultivated 

 fallow land, was nothing but an application of this 

 principle on a large scale, as indeed is any system of 

 growing a crop in wide rows to admit of some form 

 of hoe or cultivator working regularly at the ground 

 between. In a humid climate or on a porous soil there 

 is great danger of losing the nitrates formed in the 

 summer by washing out during the autumnal and winter 

 rains, nor is there any advantage gained by storing water 

 where the usual winter rainfall is sufficient to saturate 



