CH. v] Condition and Tilth 77 



undertaken by the owner of the land. The distinction 

 is not as real as it looks, "condition" and "fertility" 

 are simply different degrees of the same thing, and they 

 are separated only as a matter of convenience. In this 

 chapter we shall deal with the simpler case only, and 

 shall discuss the cultivation processes which make full 

 use of everything in the soil without, however, per- 

 manently improving it. 



Practical growers have long since discovered that 

 crops will not grow unless the land is properly culti- 

 vated, and indeed the connection between cultivation 

 and crop growth is so close that much of the improve- 

 ment in farming in the last century must be put down 

 to iniproved methods of cultivation, while much of 

 the success of the best farmers in growing large and 

 vigorous crops to-day arises from the complete mastery 

 they have gained of the cultivation of the soil. Winter 

 and spring work on the land consists largely in the 

 preparation of the seed bed, and unless this is properly 

 done the crop runs great risk of failure. 



The first object of cultivation is to get the soil into a 

 good "tilth," i.e., to make it assume the nice crumbly 

 condition which long experience has shown is best suited 

 to the growth of plants. The important fact here is that 

 the clay can exist in two states the sticky and the 

 crumbly state (p. 21): and it is such a dominating sub- 

 stance that it confers these properties on the soil. In 

 consequence any soil which contains more than about 

 10 per cent, of clay may appear in two very different 

 guises either in the nice crumbly condition of a fine 

 tilth, or in the other state when it is sticky after a spell 

 of wet weather, and dries into hard clods in dry weather. 



The second object of cultivation is to free the land of 



