496 FALLOWS MAY REPLACfc DEEP PLOUGHING AND DRAINING. 



of a naked fallow, while on similar farms in the same neighhourhood 

 they can easily be dispensed with ? 



2°. In a naked fallow, whore the seeds are allowed to sprout, and 

 young plants to shoot up, which are afterwards ploughed in, the land is 

 enriched by a green manuring of greater or less extent. If weeds abound, 

 the enriching is the greater — if they are more scanty, it is less — but in 

 almost every instance where land lies without an artificial crop during 

 the whole summer, a crop of natural herbage springs u}), the burying of 

 which in the soil must be productive of considerable good. 



3°. When land is assiduously cropped, the surface in which the roots 

 chiefly extend themselves becomes especially exhausted. In indiffer- 

 ently worked land some parts of this surface may be more exhausted than 

 others. By leaving such soils to themselves, the rains that fall and more 

 or less circulate through them equalize the condition of the whole sur- 

 face soil — in so far as the soluble substances ii contains are concerned. 

 The water also, which in dry weather ascends from beneath, brings 

 with it saline and other soluble compounds, and imparts them to the up- 

 per layers of the soil. Thus, by lying fallow, the land, becomes equa- 

 bly furnished over its whole surface with all those substances required by 

 plants which are anywhere to be found in it. The roots of the crop, 

 therefore, can more readily procure them, and thus the plants more 

 readily and more quickly grow. In some cases, this beneficial action of 

 the naked fallow will, to a certain extent, make up for shallow ploughing^ 

 ai^for insufficient working of the land. 



4°. It is known that the subsoil in many places is of such a nature 

 that it must be turned up to the surface, and exposed for a considerable 

 period to the action of the air, before k can be safely mixed with the sur- 

 face soil. To a less degree stiff clay lands acquire this noxious quality 

 during the ordinary course of cropping. Air and water do not find their 

 way through them in sufficient quantity to retain them in a healthy 

 condition, and thus they require an occasional fallow with repeated 

 ploughings, that the air and the rains may have access to their inner- 

 most parts. I do not detail the specific chemical changes which are in- 

 duced by this exposure to the air and rain ; it is sufficient that they are 

 of a kind to render the soil more propitious to the growth of crops, to 

 satisfy us that, upon very stiff" lands, one of the benefits of fallowing is to 

 be thus accounted for. 



We have seen that one of the important benefits of draining is the 

 permeability it imparts to the soil. The surface water is permitted to 

 escape downwards, and as it sinks to the drain the air follows it, so that 

 the very deepest part of the soil from which the water runs off", is ren- 

 dered wholesome by the frequent admission of new supplies of atmos- 

 pheric air. 



It thus appears that in a certain sense draining and fallowing may 

 take the place of each other — that where there is no drainage, fallowing 

 is more necessary and will partially supply its place, and tliat where a 

 good drainage exists, the use of naked fallows even upon stiff'clay lands 

 becomes less necessary. 



5°. I have already had occasion to speak of the existence of organic 

 (animal and vegetable) matter in the soil, in a so-called inert state — a 

 state in which it undergoes decay veiy slowly, and tluis only in a small 



