124 RELATIONS OF SOIL TO WATER 



circumstances in which water will be stored up in the soil. 

 This is indeed a fact, and the storing- of water is to be 

 reckoned among the benefits resulting from bare fallowing, 

 a practice which is well known to be attended with most 

 success in dry climates. King (The Soil, 191) determined 

 on May 13 the percentage of water in two portions of a field 

 about to be sown with maize ; one portion had been previously 

 a bare fallow, the other had carried clover. The results were 

 as follows : 



Water per 100 of Dry Soil in Fallow and Clover Land 



The maize sown on the fallow land would thus be far 

 better able to withstand a summer drought, than the maize 

 following clover. 



The practice of planting so-called 'catch crops' immediately 

 after harvest, and ploughing them in as green manure in 

 spring, is a system full of advantage so far as the conservation 

 of soil nitrogen is concerned ; but King points out that in 

 a dry climate such cropping and spring ploughing may be 

 actually injurious, from the loss of soil water which they 

 entail ; and that in such a climate pains must be taken to 

 plough in a green crop very early, as only then will it find 

 sufficient moisture in the soil for its decomposition, and 

 the tillage be accomplished without robbing the soil of water. 



The injurious effect of weeds has a new light thrown upon 

 it when we see that their growth dries the soil, and robs the 

 crop of the water which it might have obtained. In the 



