138 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and you will lose the manure at the same time. I have tried 

 planting corn on heavy soil, on a small scale, for use in the 

 family. I did last year. Well, I liad occasion to work that 

 ground over, after taking the crop off, and I found that scarcely 

 any of the roots penetrated three inches deep. You cannot 

 make corn roots run down into cold soil ; it is not natural. I 

 believe the corn will starve to death before it will go down any 

 depth in search of food. Therefore I would not plough deeply 

 at all on cold, undrained soil. My soil being of this rocky, 

 sandy, character, I do not believe I could derive any benefit 

 from subsoiling. I have no soil where there is clay. I do not 

 know that there is a ton of clay on my ground anywhere ; I do 

 not think there is. I am sorry there is not ; I should like it 

 much if I had some clay that I could use on my sandy soil to 

 improve it mechanically, and make it more retentive of moisture, 

 and enable it to hold manures better. But there I am. Hence 

 I have never used the subsoil plough but little, and those exper- 

 iments which I made did not prove satisfactory, and I gave it 

 up ; and the gentleman of whom I borrowed this plough has 

 never used it much. I think it has lain in his tool-house some 

 twelve years, and has not been used much, and probably never 

 will be again. His soil is very much like mine. 



I can see, that where a gentleman has a stiff, clayey subsoil, 

 and not many rocks in it, so that he can put on a team and 

 break up this hard substance beneath the surface, it will be an 

 advantage ; but I cannot see that it will be any advantage to an 

 ordinary soil, where there is none of this stiffness of subsoil. 



Mr. BiRNiE. When I first began to farm it, I had an idea 

 that deep ploughing was everything, and I made up my mind to 

 put the plough right in ; but I confess I have modified my opin- 

 ions very much by experience. I do not plough now over six 

 inches deep. I am satisfied that the roots of the crops we culti- 

 vate come pretty near the surface. I want my manure just as 

 near the surface as possible, and have it mix with the soil, after 

 harrowing it or ploughing it in. I think, if you put manure on 

 the surface and plough it in deep, it will never get to the crop. 

 I have been most successful by putting the manure on the sur- 

 face and ploughing it in very lightly. I have a subsoil plough 

 that I used years ago, but I use it very seldom now, except for 

 my root crops. I find it an excellent implement to be used in 



