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Moisture brought to the land ny rain gradually sinks into the 
ground, the surplus finding its way into soaks, swamps, or streams. 
A notable portion of this water, on the other hand, has a tendency 
to rise again toward the surface under the influence of that same 
capillary attraction which causes damp to rise on a brick wall built 
on moist ground, or which is noticeable on stakes driven into the 
ground, or on old tree trunks. This ascending current of moisture 
goes on more or less actively, evaporating on the surface on which 
play the sun and the wind, until after a long period of dry weather 
all the moisture has been sucked up from some depth below, and 
the ground gets as “dry as a brick.” 
By surface cultivation this wasteful escape of moisture from 
the ground is checked; the capillary attraction is, for a time, de- 
stroyed close to the surface, although it goes on without check a 
little deeper down; water continues, without sensible interruption, 
to be drawn up all the same from the subsoil, but, owing to the 
fact that it is no longer sucked up to the surface, where it would 
evaporate under the agency of sun-heat and wind, it accumulates 
in the layer of soil.in which the roots feed, moistening it, keeping 
it cool, and dissolving the fertilismg elements contained in the soil, 
thus favouring root-growth and, in proper time, fruit production. 
It is important, to achieve this end, that the surface soil should be 
as well pulverised as possible, and not ripped up into coarse clods. 
This would allow of the penetration into the deeper layers of the 
soil of too much heat and of the desiccating wind which, by evap- 
orating what amount of moisture is continuously rising under the 
action of capillary force, would frustrate the object of the grower 
to keep in the ground the moisture necessary to dissolve plant food 
and prepare it for the roots, which can only utilise it when pre- 
sented in the liquid form. A well cultivated field is also 
better prepared to absorb and imbibe whatever amount of water 
comes down in rainy weather, instead of allowing it to run to waste 
on a hardened crust into the drains or the gullies which carry it 
away to the rivers. Loose earth acts as a sponge which gets per- 
meated during the night by the damp air, condenses and retains its 
moisture, and freshens up the crop. 
The, thorough cultivation of the soil answers, moreover, another 
object. 
Thorough cultivation checks the growth of a meshwork of ten- 
der rootlets close up to the surface, and enables the deeper seated 
roots to-hold their own and earry on their functions under favour- 
able conditions. The cultivation should be so regulated that the 
principal roots of the plant are not injured and torn off; it should 
be deerer in hot and dry localities where surface roots are more 
liable to get scorched and desiccated in times of drought, than in 
moister and cooler districts. A maximum of six inches in dry and 
