6 



Campbell's 1902 Soil Culture Manual. 



is given to moral, mental, or physical culture, to the school or the churchy 

 or the growth of religious sentiment in the community, and to the broader 

 educational work, such as the "Farmers' Institute;" and the general effect 

 of this stunted condition is to retard the development and improvement of 

 agriculture and the people who follow it. 



It is not intended to lay down in this volume a code of imperative 

 rules to govern the farmer in every act of soil culture, but rather by ex- 

 planatory illustrations to present as clearly and plainly as possible the 

 fundamental principles which govern the movement of moisture in the 

 soil, the development of plant life, and the quantity and quality of the 

 crop. After these general principles have been grasped and understood, 

 the necessary labor in detail required to make agriculture profitable be- 

 comes clear and easy to anyone who will give these pages a careful 

 perusal. 



There cannot be laid down any rule by which to be guided in the 

 cultivation of the soil under all conditions. Soil that is too wet, naturally, 

 must be drained, while soil that is too dry by reason of insufficient rain- 

 fall, or by reason of the fact that the rainfall in any section is not distrib- 

 uted seasonably, is unfavorable to the production of any crops, but in the 

 great semi-arid area of our western country we believe a general rule may 

 be applied, and if followed diligently the resulting storage and conserva- 

 tion of the natural rainfall in the soil will produce, in average years, as 

 good crops of cereals, and of all the vegetables that are commonly grown, 

 as can be produced in the humid central portions of the United States. 



Storage and conservation of the rain waters is the basis of all this 

 fruitful production. Has the reader not observed instances where a heavy 

 snow drift has, by reason of some obstruction in the wind's course, lodged 

 in a field, and where the snow was drifted the crop in the following sum- 

 mer was better ? The usual conclusion has been that the snow drift pro- 

 tected the grain sown in the soil like a blanket, and the greater yield the 

 following season was attributed to such protection; but this is an error. 

 The reason of a greater crop on the ground so covered with the snow 

 was that the snow melted gradually in the spring time and percolated into 

 the soil at a much greater depth, and was stored, as in a reservoir, and, 

 later, when the hot period and drought of summer came, supplied the roots 

 of the plants with moisture and kept the plants growing when the plants 

 in other parts of the field not so supplied were checked, and perhaps 

 withered. 



By that almost unexplainable movement of the moisture in the soil 

 upwards towards the surface, under a natural law which is called capil- 

 lary attraction, the roots of the growing plants on the spot where the snow 

 had drifted were supplied from the res ^rvoir of water below, which had 

 come down into the lower strata of the soil as the snow in the drift had 

 melted. 



