126 SOILS 



jurious to a wet, clayey soil, making it puddle. It 

 is practised chiefly for crops that nave long roots, 

 notably for parsnips and carrots. The cost of 

 subsoiling is from $1.50 to $3.00 per acre, or fully as 

 much as the cost of plowing. It is customary to 

 subsoil about every third or fourth year. 



Deeper Plowing Desirable. The probability is 

 that tne future improvements in plows will be 

 largely along the line of increasing the width and 

 depth of the furrow without adding much to the 

 draft. The farmers of a century hence will stir the 

 soil deeper than we do, and so have more of it 

 directly under their control. But many farmers 

 of to-day do not plow nearly so deeply as they 

 might and ought. This is especially true in 

 the South, where the one-negro-one-mule-one-plow 

 combination is thought to be the best solution of 

 the problem. One mule can hardly furnish power 

 to turn even four or five inches of soil. A large 

 proportion of the Southern soils are clay, especially 

 in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. 

 These clayey soils, being very fine grained, absorb 

 water very slowly. Hence, if they are not loosened 

 and deepened by deep plowing the rains quickly 

 overflow them and tne surface drainage washes 

 away the fine, rich soil and the fertility of the land 

 with it. There are other causes of this washing 

 (see Chapter XI), but shallow plowing is now and 

 has long been one of the principal causes. 



Farmers in other parts of the country are losing 

 nearly as much by persisting in the old-time shal- 

 low plowing of four or five inches, when they might 

 easily double the feeding pasturage of their crops. 

 Many of the farmers of the western prairies, in 

 Nebraska, Dakota and contiguous states, plow very 

 shallow. Sometimes the land is plowed only three 



