124 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



pulverizing the soil, as well as to leave it in the best possible 

 condition for any crop which may follow. 



We do not propose going into details as to whether this 

 plough requires more strength of team to turn the turf eight or 

 ten inches under and bring four inches of the subsoil to the 

 surface which had never been disturbed before; but reason, 

 and the experience of to-day, have convinced us that it requires 

 (certainly for the first deep ploughing) nearly three times the 

 strength of team, with any plough, to go ten inches in a clayey 

 soil than it does to turn six inches. 



Our old friend Major Newton kindly furnished us with a 

 team of three good strong yoke of oxen; and after the other 

 (single) teams had finished their respective lots, this team of 

 three yoke was hitched to the Michigan plough, and we wit- 

 nessed with great pleasure a few rounds at the depth of ten 

 inches full — completely turning under every particle of grass, 

 and bringing up a portion of the subsoil to the surface, where, 

 if allowed to remain fallow a short time, it becomes as strong 

 and good as new. There has been a theory in times past, 

 and a very plausible theory it was, that the goodness of ma- 

 nures would be lost by deep ploughing, or rendered unavaila- 

 ble, as they must necessarily leach or filter away through the 

 substratum. Let any one who fears this calamity take turbid 

 or impure water of any kind and filtrate it through a common 

 filterer, or, in absence of this, a common flower pot, with a hole in 

 the bottom. Let him first put in his surface soil and apply his 

 turbid water, and he will soon discover that this worn-out soil 

 has not the power to deprive this barn-yard liquor or other 

 water of its color or odor, only in part; but if you fill the 

 filterer with the subsoil and run this liquor through, you find it 

 comes out robbed of its odor if not entirely of its color. Hence 

 the use of subsoil on all clayey lands, for the compost heap as 

 well as barn yards and pigsties, in preference to the surface. 

 We cannot close this report without urging our farmers to try 

 deep ploughing in almost any of our Worcester county soils — 

 certainly such as we have been ploughing to-day. This cannot 

 be too strongly urged if we would increase, by a large percent- 

 age, the amount of our crops. 



Harvey Dodge, Chairman. 



