50 THE PRINCIPLES OF 



In further reviewing the indications of fertility or the 

 reverse, we are able to divide them into those indications 

 which spring from what the soil is capable of producing, 

 being, in fact, an illustration of the old proverb, that the 

 proof of the pudding is in the eating of it. Good crops, good 

 pastures, good trees, all that the ground produces, may be 

 considered as a fair criterion as to what it is capable of pro- 

 ducing. And after dismissing those matters, we enter upon 

 the absolute examination of the soil itself. 



In doing this the colour of the soil is an important con- 

 sideration. To speak briefly, rich brown-coloured soils are 

 fertile, although not always so. But in newly-ploughed 

 up land a patchy, a piebald, or varied appearance is decidedly 

 unfavourable. If from a slight eminence the newly-ploughed 

 field has an appearance which may be compared with that 

 of a badly-made cheese patches of blue, patches of white, 

 yellow, and red it is a bad indication. Black oxides of iron, 

 silver sand, peat, ochreous deposits all are indicated by a 

 piebald, parti-coloured soil. And more than that, a parti- 

 coloured soil is never a deep soil, the variety of colour being 

 in a great measure the result of a thin skin or thin character 

 of surface soil. This change of colour will be especially 

 noticeable at the open furrows, where the ground is parted 

 and exposes the subsoil to view. 



The texture of the ground is ascertained by the feeling 

 underfoot. Strong land clings to the boots. To carry a 

 pound of clay on either boot in walking over ground is a very 

 different sensation from that caused by walking over light 

 sandy soil, where you walk without soiling your shoes. The 

 texture of land may also be ascertained by handling it, by 

 forming it into pellets, and noticing by the sense of touch and 

 by the sense of sight how far those pellets of soil are plastic 

 and tenacious, or crumbly and sandy. " A rope of sand " we 

 know is proverbially descriptive of a want of tenacity of 



