78 The soil cmd the plant 



wood because it is too exposed for farm crops. On the 

 lower slopes the arable fields are seen, while at the 

 bottom bordering the river is rough grass land, shown in 

 Fig. 39. The top is too cold and windy, and the bottom 

 too wet, to be worth cultivating. 



As the plant root is alive it wants air. The effect of 

 keeping air out can be seen by sowing some barley or 

 onion seeds in the ground and then pouring a lot of 

 water on and plastering the soil down with a spade. 

 Sow another row in nicely crumbled soil, not too wet, 

 press the seeds well in, but do not plaster the soil. 

 This second lot will generally do much better than the 

 first. If the ground round a plant is frequently trodden 

 so that it becomes very hard the plant makes much less 

 growth than if the soil were kept nice and loose. A 

 good gardener takes very great pains in preparing his 

 ground before he sows his seeds, and he is careful that no 

 one should walk on his beds lest his plants should suffer. 



Summary. We may now collect together the various 

 things we have learnt in this chapter. Plants require 

 water, air, warmth, food, and light, and they will not 

 grow if harmful substances are present. The rain-water 

 that falls remains for some time in the soil, and does not 

 at once run away or dry off: water can also move from 

 wet to dry places in the soil. Therefore the plant does 

 not need rain every day, but can draw on the stock in 

 the soil during dry weather. A sandy soil is usually 

 drier than a loam or a clay, especially if it lies rather 

 high : plants growing on a sandy soil make less growth 

 and have narrower and smaller leaves than those on a 

 moister soil. 



Situations more than five or six hundred feet above 

 sea level are, in England, as a rule, too bleak and 



