Froceedixgs of the Farmers' Club. 441 



seek nonrisliment and find it. Nature, in the broad vievc, makes no 

 abortive, at least no wanton, effort. Roots wander in search of food 

 not otherwise to be found. 



2. Our snbsoils are generally] compact and repellent. Wherever a 

 ditcher would naturally use a pick, there few roots can make their 

 way, except very slowly and by wasting effort. Few or no cereals or 

 edible roots can feed and flourish on the penetration of such subsoils. 

 And, while our sands and looser gravels are more easily traversed, 

 they seldom contain the plant food whereof the roots are in search. 

 They either remain unpenetrated, or the effort is unrewarded by any 

 gain of nutrition to the plant. 



3. Our summers and autumns are often persistently hot and dry. 

 The continuously torrid suns, which, this year, destroyed half the 

 later crops of Europe, are here encountered as often as every third 

 year. Drouth is one of the foremost causes of the failure of our 

 crops. Our ancestors mainly migrated hither from the British isles, 

 from Holland, and the coasts of northern and western Europe, where 

 humidity is the rule, protracted drouth the exception. Sixteen 

 inches of soil in our climate is hardly equal, as an antidote to 

 drouth, to six inches in Ireland or Holland. And yet the best farm- 

 ers of those countries agree in commending deeper plowing. 



4. "What we advocate is not the burying of the vegetable mold or 

 natural surface-soil under several inches of cold, lifeless clay, sand, or 

 o;ravel. If the subsoil is not to be enriched, it mav better remain 

 the subsoil ; but that does not prove that it ought not to be lifted, 

 stirred, aerated, pulverized. The right thing to do is to enrich as 

 well as mellow and aerate the entire soil to a depth of fully eighteen 

 inches ; though twelve may answer, as a beginning. Use a Michigan 

 or a subsoil plow, if you will, and keep the various strata where 

 nature placed them ; but give your plants, like your cattle, a chance 

 to reach food and drink at all times. Let down the bars that would 

 keep them from the life-giving springs. 



5. Plants look to the soil for 1, anchorage ; 2, moisture ; 3, most 

 of their food. If they cannot find these more certainly and m-ore 

 abundantly in twelve to eighteen inches of soil than in six, then rea- 

 son is a fool, mathematics a conjectural science, and a farmer should 

 prefer a balance in bank to his credit of $600 to one of $1,800. 



6. We are told that roots prefer to run near the surface, loving 

 the warmth of the sun. Let them run there, then ; we do not hinder 

 them. Make the soil rich as well as deep, and let them run near the 



