HAMPSHIRE SOCIETY. 265 



room and they will choose their direction wisely. If you bury 

 an old shoe by the side of a grape vine, ten thousand rootlets 

 will shoot towards it ; while if you put in the same place a 

 quantity of bog iron, they will all turn their faces from it. 

 The roots of plants should not be confined, as by our common 

 method of ploughing, to five or six inches of soil. They 

 should have at least three times as much space, out of which 

 to choose the proper conditions of moisture and dryness, of 

 heat and cold, and to select food appropriate to the plant to 

 which they belong. By loosening the soil to a great depth we 

 secure the conditions which the plant demands. We create a 

 porosity by which excessive rains pass off without injury; and 

 we secure a capillary action by which water deep in the earth 

 is drawn upward, when the surface would otherwise be too 

 dry. We thus secure the plant against serious injury from 

 hard rains or excessive drouth. 



In soil loosened to a sufficient depth, there is always going 

 on an equalizing process. If too much water falls on the sur- 

 face, it passes freely to the subsoil. If excessive evaporation 

 takes place from the surface, the moisture from below is drawn 

 upward, in a less quantity, it is true, but on much the same 

 principle as in a sponge, with its lower side placed in the- 

 water. In its progress upwards, it brings along with it various 

 salts, with which it had become impregnated in the ground, 

 and applies them in solution — the only state in which plants 

 can appropriate them — to the roots. That water does thus- 

 pass upward, that it brings up food for plants properly dissolved: 

 for their use, and that it does this the more perfectly in propor- 

 tion as the ground is deeply pulverized, we suppose is not 

 denied. These facts show, not only that long rooted plants- 

 are benefited by having an extensively loosened soil, through^ 

 which to send their runners far and deep after food and mois- 

 ture, but also that short root plants are benefited by having a 

 deep, well prepared medium through which food and moisture 

 may be brought to them. It is certain that onions, with 

 fibrous roots extending not more, probably, than six inches 

 into the ground, will exhaust the strength of manure, lying at 

 almost any distance below, if the intervening space be occu- 

 34 



