SUBSOIL ATTACHMENT. 171 



Our idea is, that by loosening the subsoil by this attachment, 

 we enable the rains to soak down through, which they would 

 not do, our subsoil being clay, (which will not take in water, 

 unless the earth was loosened,) and our corn roots run down 

 there to get their moisture. The effect of the manure is felt 

 there ; and the second year, when we come to plough up 

 again, after this stirring of the subsoil, we drop our ploughs 

 down and throw up part of this subsoil. I can illustrate the 

 effect of that, perhaps, in this way. If you take a small box, 

 and fill it five inches deep with ashes, and turn on a certain 

 quantity of water, enough to make the ashes extremely wet, 

 you will see at once that there will be a caking of those ashes, 

 that is, a hardening process, which would not be felt if the same 

 quantity of water were poured upon ashes eight inches deep. 

 The roots will run down into that soil, or the ashes (as I am 

 using that illustration,) and the water will be retained through- 

 out those ashes, of that depth, longer, and be more beneficial to 

 the crop, than it could in ashes four inches deep. 



I used one year a steel plough with this subsoil attachment, 

 and I turned over my green sward six inches, with the subsoil 

 attachment running under four inches. I think we certainly, 

 in that northern country, derive a benefit by stirring the soil the 

 first year, and very great benefit, without lifting it to the sur- 

 face, and then lifting it to the surface, and mixing it in the 

 succeeding ploughing. I have in my mind now a six acre 

 piece, which I am confident, in fact I know, would not lialf feed 

 a cow tlu'ough the season. We could not get more than four 

 or five inches of soil before we came to a hard clay subsoil, that 

 retained the water upon it, making the land cold, backward, 

 and sour. After ditching that land, and putting in some under- 

 drains (which of course benefited it, without ploughing,) we 

 commenced ploughing this land in this way, to get a deeper 

 soil ; not using the subsoil attachment that time, because we 

 did not have it, but using a common plough, following the 

 furrow afterwards, and lifting one or two inches at a time. I 

 am speaking within bounds when I say, that the second year, 

 the crop of corn paid twice Gver for the labor of ditching and 

 double ploughing. It is as good a piece of land now, I thiukj 

 as can be found in the town of Lee, 



