10 PEEMANENT AND TEMPOBAEY PASTUEES. 



100°. Here is an illustration of tlie conditions which prevail on 

 a hot day with water-logged soil. Under scorching sunshine, 

 the soil when full of water becomes intensely cold immediately 

 beneath the surface. The top crust may feel warm to the touch, 

 but a plunging thermometer forced into the subsoil will reveal a 

 difference of many degrees in temperature which the rainfall on 

 the surface is powerless to raise. Warm water is never known 

 to descend naturally, and when the sun's rays cease to fall on 

 undrained land the cold subsoil quickly brings the surface to its 

 own low temperature. This rapid change gives birth to the mists 

 which in autumn are so famihar in the Fens and in the valley of 

 the Thames. Surely there need be no wonder that under these 

 adverse conditions the grass on badly-drained land is late to 

 begin growing in spring and early to cease in autumn. 



An eminent German scientist has demonstrated that there 

 is an intimate connection between a warm dry soil and economy 

 in feeding cattle. Friable land absorbs more heat than land 

 which is saturated with moisture, and retains the heat for a 

 longer period. Upon the one animals lie warmer, especially at 

 night, than they do upon the other. Now a largQ proportion of 

 the food consumed by animals is utilised for the production of 

 the heat which is constantly dissipated from their bodies. It 

 follows that additional food becomes necessary to replace the 

 animal heat lost by the colder surroundings. 



Land which is properly drained comes under the influence 

 of another operation of Nature, to the great advantage of the 

 crops upon it. Water would, after it has passed through the 

 surface to the subsoil, be lost to plant-hfe, were it not for the 

 wonderful natural arrangement known as capillarity.^ As the 



' Baron Liebig, in his Natural latvs of Husbandry/, thus describes the action of water 

 in a state of motion: — 



' If we regard the porous earth as a system of capillary tubes, the condition which 

 must render them best suited for the growth of plants is unquestionably this: that the 

 narrow capillary spaces should be filled with water, the wide spaces with air, and that 

 all of them should be accessible to the atmosphere. In a moist soil of the kind affordino- 

 free access to atmospheric air, the absorbent root-fibres are in most intimate contact with 



