THE DRY FARMING CONGRESS. 



81 



dent every day. Neverless, chemical analyses seem to indicate that com- 

 pared to the soils of Europe, the Transvaal lands are poor in the essential 

 elements of fertility. Notwithstanding this, in favorable seasons the fields 

 of the Transvaal produce abundantly, and we reap, when the locusts are 

 busy in the other Colonies, rich harvests of all kinds of crops. What then 

 is the explanation? In a series of interesting researches, Mr. R. D. Watt* 

 of the Transvaal Department of Agriculture has shown that, although our 

 soils are lacking in humus or vegetable matter, not only are nitrifying 

 bacteria present in abundance, but they are found in a state of great ac- 

 tivity. He further concludes that in a semi-tropical country like the 

 Transvaal, nitrification proceeds much more rapidly than in a more tern 

 perate land, such as England, with the consequent rapid disappearance 

 of organic matter — in the form of plant and animal remains — from the 

 soil. These experiments are fullj^ corroborated by the fact that many of 

 our sandy soils, which on analysis are found to be very poor in nitrogen, 

 are yet capable of producing excellent crops. Further, it might be sup- 

 posed that our long, dry winter would have an injurious effect on these 

 organisms, but Watt found the nitrogen germs present in a fairly active 

 state even at the very end of our dry winter. The practical lesson from, 

 these experiments is very plain. 



Soil Treatment. 



"The Transvaal farmer must strive to promote the action of these 

 beneficial soil germs by tillage, manuring, and liming. More important 

 to my mind, however, than either the chemical of biological factors, at 

 least so far as dry farming is concerned, is depth of soil. And I un- 

 hesitatingly support the view advanced many years ago by that eminent 



Hilgard on Soils. 



scientist, Professor Hilgard, of California, as to the great value of depth 

 of soil in relation to the water-holding capacity of semi-arid lands. Hil- 

 gard has shown that the low humus content in the soil of arid regions 

 is more than balanced by the high nitrogen-percentage which renders 

 nitrification more rapid. He writes, Tt thus appears that on the average 

 the humus of the arid soils contains about three and one-half as much 

 nitrogen as that of the humid.' **And again, 'An additional consideration 

 is the probable greater ease with which the nitrifying bacteria can act 

 upon a material so rich in nitrogen. We must not, then, be mislead by 

 the smallness of many humus-percentages in the arid region, into an as- 

 sumption of a deficiency in the supply of soil-nitrogen.' 



Effect of Soils. 



"In the Transvaal, in our dry districts, a casual examination will re- 

 veal two widely different types of land. The one may be characterized as 

 a shallow, sandy soil, one to three feet in depth, resting upon gravel or 

 rock; whilst the other is a deep uniform, sandy loam, of from ten to 



*Transvaal Agricultural Journal, Vol., No. 26, Page 202. 

 **Soils, by E. W. Hilgard, page 138. 



