Proceedings op the Farmers' Club. 365 



the refreshing effects of the dews and gentle rains, but near at hand 

 where much of the larger portion of the roots do naturally concen- 

 trate and seek food and moisture, near tlie surface where they can 

 find what they seek in the moderately compact soil. He, Mr. Greeley, 

 varies on the principle that the roots can find these more certainly 

 and abundantly there if they will depart from nature's line to find 

 them. But the real question is, will they do this ? If plant food is 

 planted at a great depth below, where nature's laws designed the 

 main body of the roots should go, and placed there at a great expense 

 and much labor too, will the roots violate nature's laws so far as to 

 seek the food there placed to an extent to pay the extra expense of 

 pulverizing the ground and placing it there ? That is the real ques- 

 tion at issue. Until the advocates for deep plowing and deepening 

 the soil can show this to be the case, their system' must be an utter 

 failure ; and unless or until they can make it appear, which they 

 have not attempted yet, that the material tendency of the main body 

 of the roots of our field crops (not a few straggling ones) is down- 

 wards on the cold, sweet, subsoil far below, and away from the 

 genial, warmth of the sun, in connection with the reviving effects of 

 the dews and gentle rains and moisture brought up from below by 

 the heat of the sun to the surface before it can evaporate, their sys- 

 tem must be a hopeless one. Our virgin soils are but rarely four 

 hiches in depth, much of them less, except where the wash of the 

 country has deepened them, and these have received the accumula- 

 tion of the roots and vegetation for many thousands of years, or since 

 the surface of the earth received its present form. These virgin soils 

 have become deepened only as the plows have gone down and mixed 

 the root soils with them, and not by the roots of the plants penetrat- 

 ing and enriching the subsoil. I know land of the above description 

 which has produced thirty-five bushels of wheat, and straw enough 

 for much more, to the acre, 100 bushels of corn, and as much grass as 

 could grow, the subsoil of which is loose for several feet from the sur- 

 face ; but the roots of the above crops, with many others, have never 

 penetrated the subsoil in sufficient quantity to change its color or 

 make it perceptible. This, to me, is conclusive evidence that the 

 natural tendency of the roots is not below ; and I apprehend all the 

 inventions and contrivances of men will never be able to change 

 the course of nature so as to drive or induce the roots to seek food 

 and moisture below where nature or its great author designed them 

 to." 



