20 ESSEX SOCIETY. 



soil plough on soils of different textures, may vary. On a stiff 

 clay, and particularly one that is very moist, the effect is less 

 permanent. The tendency of the several parts in a soil of this 

 character to reunite, is so strong, and the effect of sub-soiling of 

 so short duration, I will allow it may be of doubtful expedi- 

 ency. 



But in our hard New-England soils, with our hot New-Eng- 

 land summers, so subject to severe droughts, at a season when 

 our crops, particularly what are called our root crops, require 

 the greatest supply of moisture, there cannot be, it would seem 

 to me, a doubt, among farmers of a reflecting mind, as to the 

 great benefits to their crops of the use of the sub-soil plough. It 

 furnishes, in my opinion, an almost sure and certain means of 

 counteracting the injurious effects of our sometimes severe 

 droughts. The reasons would seem too obvious to need recital. 

 The deep trench opened by the sub-soil plough, forms a recepta- 

 cle for the surplus water that falls upon the surface at one sea- 

 son of the year, where it is retained to supply the deficiency at 

 another. The " under crust " which is formed in long-cultivated 

 fields, at the depth from the surface at which it has usually been 

 ploughed, has in most soils become as impenetrable by roots of 

 plants, as the highway which has been travelled over for a like 

 number of years. The increase of crops in consequence of sub- 

 soiling has never, with me, been less than twenty-five per cent. 

 The supply of rains for the present season has been so abundant, 

 that the difference in the yield upon lands sub-soiled and those 

 not sub-soiled, could not be supposed to be so great on grounds 

 naturally dry, as in some of the past dry seasons ; and yet on a 

 dry loamy soil, with a hard gravelly sub-soil, one part of which 

 was sub-soiled and the other not, planted with the Chenango po- 

 tato, I have recently gathered four bushels from each of the sub- 

 soiled rows, while from the rows not sub-soiled, planted side by 

 side, and cultured and manured, in other respects, precisely 

 similar to the sub-soiled rows, I have taken but three bushels. 

 There is a difference of twenty-five per cent, in quantity ; and 

 such was the improved quality and appearance of those on the 

 sub-soiled part of the field, that they actually sold in the market 

 for twenty-five per cent, more than the others. 



