110 OUR FARM CROPS. 



the soil should be freed from all surplus moisture that 

 it should be stirred as deeply as possible and that 

 its particles should be always kept in the state of greatest 

 division. These particles, though in a state of minute 

 division, can be consolidated, and the soil rendered as 

 firm as may be desired for any particular crop, by the 

 use of the roller, or any other form of surface pressure ; 

 but whether consolidated or not, the benefit of their 

 division remains the same, and the roots of the grow- 

 ing crop have access to a far larger surface of feeding 

 ground, than they can have where the subsoil is left in 

 the indurated and cemented condition in which it is so 

 generally seen on shallow-ploughed farms. It is equally 

 desirable, too, that the land should be in good heart or 

 condition; as although barley is grown successfully on 

 what are termed inferior soils, when compared with our 

 wheat soils, still we find when we sum up the require- 

 ments of the two crops respectively, that a crop of 

 barley abstracts from the soil the same substances 

 (see page 130), and in about the same quantities, as the 

 wheat does; and that as its growth is more rapid, it 

 requires these substances to be in a state ready for im- 

 mediate assimilation. The constitution of the roots of 

 the two plants and their habits differ materially. The 

 healthy wheat plant pushes out vigorous roots, which 

 ramify in all directions, and penetrate deep into the 

 lower strata of the soil in search of suitable materials for 

 its structure, thus obtaining an increased surface for the 

 action of its numerous feeders. The barley plant appears 

 to have less power of root development ; cultivation has 

 given to it a speedy growth, and thereby induced a capacity 

 for rapid increase, and a consequent necessity for large 

 supplies of assimilable food; its roots, if examined care- 

 fully, are found to be far less developed than those of the 

 wheat grown under similar conditions; their habit is 



