Objects to be xiccoMPLiSHED by Plowing. 147 



would do under similar circumstances. A vine with twelve square 

 feet of foliage exhaled at the rate of five or six ounces a day. An 

 acre of Indian corn, having 1500 plants on an acre, would exhale 

 about one ton of water in a day. If this moisture is supplied by 

 the roots from the reservoirs of water in the ground as fast as it 

 is exhaled, no mischief is done; on the contrary, the plant is 

 benefited by the increased vital action which ensues. If, on the 

 other hand, the supply from the ground is less than the amomit 

 evaporated, the plant withers and finally dies. 



Every farmer is familiar with the curling of the corn leaves 

 when the evaporation is most rapid under the fierce heats and the 

 blue skies of midsummer, especially when the surface is baked 

 hard. He also knows that the true antidote to this condition is a 

 thorough pulverization of the soil. When this is eflTected, the 

 stores of moisture in the depths of the earth are pumped up by 

 the capillary attraction of the interstices of the soil, and the 

 balance between supply and demand is once more restored. 



Soil in a finely divided state radiates heat much more rapidly 

 than when its surface is hard and baked; it will therefore cool 

 more rapidly. Dew is deposited in the clear nights most copi- 

 ously on those bodies which are relatively colder than the sur- 

 rounding air. It follows from this, that when two contiguous 

 acres of land are planted with an equal number of corn plants, 

 they will both exhale the same amount of moisture from their 

 leaves; but if the soil of one of the acres is thoroughly pulverized, 

 and the other is hard baked, vastly more of the daily exhalation 

 will be returned to the pulverized soil than to the hard one, on 

 account of its superior radiant powers. The pulverized soil will 

 thus be supplied with water at the expense of the other. 



No soil can produce maximum crops of any kind where the 

 food of the desired kind of plant is taken up and appropriated 

 by weeds. It is therefore one of the prime objects of agriculture 

 to destroy them, and at the same time to utilize them so as to 

 make them restore to the desired plant that nutriment of which 

 they have already robbed it. Other things being equal, that plow 

 is best which most completely buries the weeds growing on the 

 surface and secures their decomposition, so that the roots of the 

 growing plant can avail themselves of the food stowed away in 

 the cells of the weeds. 



We have now completed the task we proposed to ourselves, by 

 showing all the objects which it is proposed to accomplish by the 



