H4 TILLAGE— MOVEMENTS OF SOIL WATER [chap. 



At Rothamsted portions of the wheat field were 

 fallowed during the summer of 1904, and the following 

 table shows the percentage of water in the fine earth on 

 13th September, 2-849 inches of rain having fallen since 

 the crops had been cut. 



In the surface layer there is practically no difference, 

 both having become equally wet by the rains after 

 harvest, but in the lower depths the fallow soils are the 

 wetter, and the differences are more pronounced for the 

 unmanured plot where a small crop had been grown 

 than for the dunged plot with its larger crop. 



The way in which fallowed land is of benefit to 

 the crop, both by making nitrates and particularly by 

 saving water in a dry season, is easily seen in the 

 superior plant always found on the outside rows or 

 edges of an experimental plot divided from the others 

 by a bare path ; on one side the plant has the benefit 

 of fallow ground as well as of extra space, light, and 

 air, and flourishes accordingly. The Lois-Weedon 

 system of husbandry, where the land was divided 

 into alternate 5 -foot strips of corn and cultivated 

 fallow land, was nothing but an application of this 

 principle on a large scale, as indeed is any system of 

 growing a crop in wide rows to admit of some form 

 of hoe or cultivator working regularly at the ground 



