SOILS SUITABLE FOR BARLEY. 195 



in, is after a slight shower has moistened the soil. The plan 

 of moistening or damping barley seed in very dry weather 

 has been suggested as a good means of securing a braird. 



(7.) A slightly moist, a soft and friable soil, is necessary for 

 the barley. To secure the two latter features, the whole of 

 the details of the preparation of the land must therefore 

 be carried carefully out, and they at the same time indicate 

 the nature of what is called " barley " soil, a thing essen- 

 tially different from a " wheat so.il," which latter is diffi- 

 cult to bring into the fine friable tilth so necessary for the 

 barley. As regards the soil, then, for the barley crop, 

 Professor Wilson sums up the whole that need be said on the 

 subject thus : " Agriculturally speaking, their range is from 

 the lightest gravels up to the medium loams ; beyond a 

 medium loam the proportion of clay renders the soil unfit 

 for the cultivation of barley." The difference in the struc- 

 ture of the roots of the wheat and the barley plants indi- 

 cates the difference required in the soil, or rather its con- 

 dition. The roots of the wheat have a remarkable ten- 

 dency to push themselves deep into the soil as well as to 

 ramify in all directions; those of the barley plants have 

 the power given them of spreading laterally, and a de- 

 velopment remarkable for its quickness. We see, then, 

 the wheat plant distinguished by what we may call a ver- 

 ticality of root-development and a slowness of growth, and 

 the barley by a horizontality and a quickness of growth. 

 The roots of the Avheat plant draw their assimilable food 

 from the soil slowly, and from a great depth ; those of the 

 barley have to draw it quickly, and from the surface, and 

 much more in a given time than the wheat roots. This 

 quick abstraction of the food from the soil by the barley 

 plant is also aided by a peculiarity which distinguishes 

 them namely, the number of root fibres or " hair-like 

 processes" by which the roots are supplied, and which Pro- 

 fessor Lindley calls " the mouths of the root." A quick 

 drawer and a greedy drawer of the manurial matters con- 

 tained in the soil, and that soil confined by the habits of 

 growth of the plant, the inference is readily drawn, that 



