30 



Now after you have built them you can plow over them just like they 

 were not there. Just plow back and forth. The only thing you need to do, 

 probably every couple of years, is to take a grader or a drag and drag them 

 up. You all know how long an old back furrow that you have thrown up 

 a couple of times in the same place lasts. You know how much longer a 

 ridge through there like a roadgrade lasts. 



Now let me give you one figure that will help you to understand the 

 value of that and then I am through. If we have a slope on a piece of land 

 of ten feet in a hundred, when we have a four inch rain that four inch rain 

 has the power to carry a given amount of dirt, depending on organic matter 

 there to hold it. If it is bare a four inch rain on that slope will carry a 

 given amount of dirt. Let us say it will take a pound of dirt and organic 

 matter off a square rod, for illustration, with a slope of ten feet in a hun- 

 dred. Now then, if we double the slope to twenty feet in a hundred we in- 

 crease the power of the same amount of rainfall to carry the dirt, don't we, 

 because it slopes more? How much more do you suppose we increase it? 

 You have been following it pretty closely. How much do you suppose? 



Q. Fifty times. 



Mr. GOUGLER: Pretty good. Does anybody else want to guess? 



PRESIDENT MANN: About the thirteenth power. 



Mr. GOUGLER: Let us get it in his terms. He says the thirteenth 

 power. That is getting into deep arithmetic. 



Q. That is beyond me, the thirteenth power. 



Mr. GOUGLER: If we double the velocity of the water we increase the 

 wearing or carrying power of the water sixty-four times. If we double the 

 velocity we increase the power to wash sixty-four times. All right, now 

 let us reverse the thing. Say this field is a field that slopes ten feet in a 

 hundred and we are going to make the water fall six inches in a hundred. 

 Can you imagine how much that will decrease the power of the water to 

 carry dirt? Men, it is not only the gulley that washes, that is your loss 

 That is what you see. You do not see what is going off the who'e surface, 

 do you? 



I thank you. 



PRESIDENT MANN: The more we study soil the closer the relation 

 is realized between soils and animal nutrition, the more we see the value of 

 the things in the soil that must be used in animal and human nutrition, and 

 hence limestone. Bacteria love sweet things and the fungi, molds and mill- 

 dews love sour things. It is the sweet things we want, that is one reason we 

 use limestone. 



Another use for limestone is that plants must have it to construct their 

 own selves, and hence animals must have it to construct themselves. Another 

 thing we use limestone for is to preserve not only the proper reactions in 

 the soil, but to preserve the proper reactions in the animals and plants. 

 They resist the molds and mildews a good deal by having sweet clovers, 

 then they resist the bacteria a good deal by having sour stomachs, and we 

 must maintain the reatcions in the animal body. We must also maintain 

 certain reactions in the plants themselves. Parts of the plants are sour and 

 parts of them are sweet, and the plants must have limestone to preserve 

 their proper reactions. Then we have the physical results from limestone. 

 We want a soil that is open, porous and loose. As we go along we can 

 just grasp a few of. the great values which come from limestone, and being 

 basic to agriculture it means that we must know more about our supplies 

 and the quality of the limestone that we have to deal with. 



Now the first special committee that was appointed by the Illinois Agri- 

 cultural Association, which is a business organization, was a committee whose 

 business it was to see that the farmers of the state could get limestone and 

 phosphate, and we are glad to have at this meeting Mr. Bent, who is di- 

 rector of that department, to tell us something about the limestone deposits 

 in the state, their quality, their extensiveness and all those things. Mr. Bent 

 will now talk to us. [Applause.] 



