No. 133.] 251 



SUBSOILING. 



Prof. Mapes adverted to the singular result of subsoil plow- 

 ing on the crops of Mr. Cleaveland of Jersey. He had, in pur- 

 suance of my advice, subsoiled his land and found the crops rath- 

 er worse for it. This fact was not to be doubted, and it w^as a 

 most singular exception to all other cases I was acquainted with. 

 I therefore thouglit it necessary to examine his subsoil carefully, 

 in order to know the cause. I caused careful analysis to be made 

 by my faithful chemist, I\Ir. Bradley, who found absent in a re- 

 markable degree the ordinary amount of phosphoric acid, and 

 one or two other requisite elements. By adding which to his soil, 

 my friend Cleveland will find his crops all right, and the depth of 

 tillage by the subsoiling as good as others find it to be for grow- 

 ing and sustaining a crop. 



Clover plowed in is a well-known fertilizer : the truth is that 

 it is made up from organic matter almost entirely. Its ashes be- 

 ing but barely one per cent of the whole, the rest is carbonaceous 

 matter from the atmosphere. It appears so, by a late analysis 

 made by Prof. Way, which is undoubtedly correct. Dr. Ander- 

 son says that a crop of clover will remove from an acre of soil, 

 about twenty-three pounds of phosphoric acid ; that an experi- 

 mental clover field, of 1849, had received for the first time in 

 1817, a dressing of superphosphate of lime, with great improve- 

 ment of the crop. The red kellis hard pan of ray farm abounds 

 in potash and soda, and well plowed and subsoiled, soon make a 

 fine soil. Clover throws off much excrementitious matter. Its 

 deep roots bring up moisture. . The decay of the clover turned 

 in a carbonization, — it becomes charcoal carbon, it finally coats 

 every grain of and — thus rendering the soil black. 



A naturally sandy soil through which water will descend 2 ft. 

 will, by free ploughing in of clover, become retentive of the 

 moisture and of the grass, and it also will retain the elements of 

 organic b6dies, and let nothing but pure water leach down 

 through it. The clover crop takes up water very freely, and one 

 acre of it will, by evaporation, give hogsheads of water in one 

 day to tlie atmosphere. 



