80 ON PLOUGHING. 



plant the means of penetrating deeper in search of moisture, when 

 there is a rednndancj, it is believed to furnish a means of absorbing 

 or drawing oflF the excess of moisture. 



I readily grant that the effect produced by the use of the subsoil 

 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 reu- 

 nite, is so strong, and the effect of subsoiling of so short duration, I 

 will allow it may be of doubtful expediency. 



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

 summers, so subject to severe droughts, at a season when our crops, 

 particularly what are called our root crops, require the greatest sup- 

 ply of moisture, there cannot be, it would seem tome, a doubt, among 

 farmers of a reflecting mind, as to the great benefits to their crops 

 of the use of the subsoil Plough. It furnishes in my opinion an al- 

 most 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 subsoil 

 plough forms a receptacle for the surplus water that falls upon the 

 surface at one season of the year, when 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 usual- 

 ly 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 subsoil- 

 ing 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 subsoiled and those not subsoiled, 

 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 loomy soil, with a 

 hard gravelly subsoil, one part of which was subsoiled and the other 

 not, planted with the chenango potato, I have recently gathered four 

 bushels from each of the subsoiled rows, while from the rows not 

 subsoiled, planted side by side, and cultured and manured, in 

 other respects, precisely similar to the subsoiled rows, I have tak- 

 en 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 subsoiled part of the field, that they actually sold in 

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



