5C6 TbaxsactioiYS of the American Institute. 



Winter "Wheat. 

 The soils best adapted to the profitable cultivation of winter wheat 

 have a large proportion of clay and lime in their composition, with 

 sufficient sand to prevent the formation of hard masses or lumps 

 during the process of cultivation in moist weather. Such a soil is 

 usually called a " clayey loam," and the springs of water that flow 

 from it will be so impregnated with lime as to render it too hard to 

 use for washing purposes. The trees that are usually produced spon- 

 taneously by such lands will be mostly of the harder kinds of wood, 

 the oaks abounding. This description is not intended to be eitlier 

 scientific or minute, but to indicate the leading characteristics with 

 sufficient accucracy to enable the mere traveler, as he passes along, 

 to judge of the capacities of an unsettled country so far as the soil 

 alone- can indicate. In settled districts, the practices of the farmers 

 will be a certain test of the wheat -producing powers of the land, for 

 it is certain that where winter wheat maybe said to be a natural crop, 

 there it will be grown in preference to any other. 



Winter Wheat requires a Well Drained Soil. 

 Some lands are perfectly drained by nature ; other lands, though 

 they may have every constituent that the agricultural chemist would 

 desire, will not raise wheat without artificial drainage, at a great cost. 

 The more clay abounds the more elaborate must be this artificial 

 draining. Sandy loams, with open porous subsoils, generally require 

 but little artificial draining, and this is strikingly true when the land 

 is but just cleared of the forest. While the roots of the trees are 

 decaying and making channels through the subsoil, many forms are 

 able to produce wheat in perfection, that refuse to do so after the land 

 has been under cultivation many years, and these root-made channels 

 have become obliterated. This I have seen over wide-spread areas. 

 When the land was new it was dry enough ; M-hen plowed for many 

 years, it had become so heav}' tliat in wet times it was nearly mortar, 

 and in dry times hard, indurated, and filled with cracks. Thorough 

 draining is then the only remedy, and if clay predominates, it is the 

 certain remedy. Undrained clay lands are never worn out, for the 

 owner that lacks the energy to free them from stagnant water, never 

 has force enough to exhaust their fertility by crojiping. Manure on 

 such land is nearly thrown away. Draining is the first thing to be 

 done, next thorougli cultivation, then manure. Whoever reverses 

 this order throM's away his money and his labor. There are some 



