46 



every spot smooth and polished, and although vegetation may wilt and 

 present a starved and stunted aspect, yet many people would pronounce 

 such gardening as perfect. This, however, is not cultivation. Hoeing, 

 as understood by a thorough culturist, means more than merely killing 

 weeds. He aims at having the soil deeply and thorougly broken up, 

 and left loose, rough, and untramped. His criterion oi beauty here is 

 not influenced by the element of smoothness. 



MECHANICAL PEEPAEATION OF SOIL. 



The physical or mechanical condition of the soil, its relation to air 

 and water, has not received the attention from agricultural chemists 

 which its importance demands. They have devoted their investiga- 

 tions almost solely to its chemical constituents, seeming to lose sight of 

 the fact that the permeability of the soil to atmospheric influences is of 

 more importance than the most approved manures. If half the money 

 that has been expended upon artificial manures during the last twenty 

 years had been devoted to drainage, subsoiling, and trenching, the 

 products of the country would have been vastly increased. 



The soil performs various offices towards growth of plants. It serves 

 as a basis in which they may fix their roots and sustain themselves in 

 position ; it also supplies inorganic food during all periods of their 

 growth, and may be looked upon as a laboratory in which many chemic 

 changes are taking place ; preparing the various kinds of food which it 

 is destined to yield to the growing plant. Analyses have shown that 

 in most soils the presence of all the constituents of the ashes of plants 

 may be detected, though in variable proportions. But the mere pres- 

 ence of certain substances in soils does not insure productiveness, for 

 it has been shown that crops have failed even in soils possessing all the 

 mineral ingredients required, because, although present, they were not 

 in a sufficiently soluble state to be available. Thus in wet, clayey 

 soils, although containing enough of plant food, the water prevents 

 free access to the decomposing influence of the atmosphere, and crops 

 perish, not because of a deficiency of raw material, but on account of 

 the processes for its preparation being arrested. 



This leads to the foundation of all improvements of such soils, viz, 

 draining. It is a remark frequently made by those having no expe- 

 rience that draining must be worse than useless in a climate where 

 summer droughts are among the greatest calamities against which the 

 cultivator has to contend. All who have witnessed the effects of 

 draining need not be told that even in soils not particularly retentive, 

 draining, in connection with deep culture, will secure a more ample and 

 lasting supply of moisture in dry weather and maintain a growing 

 vegetation during the most severe droughts. Draining increases the 

 capability of the soil for absorbing moisture ; all soils have their cer- 

 tain absorbing properties ; like a sponge, they absorb until their pores 



