15° MAIZE 



chap, good depth, for shallow soils require manuring sooner than 

 ' deep ones. A friable soil which neither bakes nor cracks much 

 in dry weather is desirable. The black " turf" soils of parts of 

 South Africa are often rich, but in seasons of drought are apt 

 to dry out too much, or in wet years to become water-logged. 

 Red clay soils, also, give good crops in some districts. Some 

 of the more sandy soils bear two or three crops and are then 

 exhausted, or become so loose with cultivation that they blow 

 away from the roots of the young maize plants. 



There are some soils along the Drakensberg range of 

 mountains which Prof. Watt {Watt, R. D., i) has found to 

 contain so much of the ferrous iron compounds that maize 

 and kaffir corn do not grow more than a few inches in height 

 even in favourable seasons. Loamy soils, whether red or 

 grey, with some admixture of sand, are among the best all- 

 round soils for maize. In the Transvaal such are found 

 largely in the Heidelberg, Standerton, Bethal, Ermelo, and 

 Lichtenburg Districts, and on that large stretch of country 

 known as the Springbok Flats. Deep, loamy, alluvial river- 

 bottom soils, such as are found along parts of the Vaal River, 

 Kaffir Spruit, the Crocodile, Hex, Marico, and other Transvaal 

 streams, are admirably suited to maize-growing. The rich 

 soils found in pockets along the foot of the eastern slopes of 

 the Drakensberg produce some of the finest crops in the 

 country, but only a short distance out on the plains beyond, 

 there occurs a strip of ashy grey soil which seems unsuited to 

 maize or almost any other crop. 



306. New v. Old Lands. — A common practice in South 

 Africa is to abandon maize lands after the third year, either 

 because they are supposedly " worn out," or on account of 

 weeds. New lands usually give poor maize crops. Experi- 

 ence at the Government Experiment Farm at Potchefstroom, 

 the Government Stud Farm at Standerton, and the demon- 

 stration farms of Messrs. John Fowler & Co. at Vereeniging, 

 all in the Transvaal, shows that the best crops may be ob- 

 tained in the fourth and fifth year of continuous cultivation 

 of the soil. As the land becomes well opened up to air and 

 water, chemical changes take place in the soil which liberate 

 the plant-food or make it available to the plant. There 

 are a few places in the Transvaal where the soil does not 



