— 2- 



into a bare pasture. They must have food containing 

 fattening properties; they must have plenty of water and 

 must suffer neither from cold nor heat. 



These same things must be done for the plants of the 

 field and the trees of the orchards if they are to produce 

 good crops for the harvest. Every farmer knows what 

 grains will fatten his stock and day by day__he can judge 

 of the quality and measure the quantity at feeding time; 

 but the food that plants like and thrive upon he cannot 

 see and so he often forgets that they need anything more 

 than just a place to send their roots into — that is to say — 

 a place to hold onto. Then no matter what the weather 

 has been he blames it when the crops are poor and forgets 

 that while these same crops were getting ready for the 

 harvest he gave them nothing to eat. Yet plants are just 

 as hungry as growing boys and can eat almost as much. 

 The food that the farmer feeds his cattle is taken from 

 the corn-crib, granary, or haymow, but plant food is hid- 

 den away in that wonderful store-house of plant food — 

 the soil. But this food is not always stored away in a 

 form which the plants can use and sometimes there is 

 none at all where it is most needed. This is the reason 

 why thinking farmers are studying the soil to find out all 

 its hiding places for plant food and learning how to get 

 at this food as the plants need it. The study of the soil 

 goes so deep into the mysteries of the formation of this 

 earth that men who have studied it all their lives still feel 

 that they know little about it after all. 



WHAT THE SOIL IS. 



Can you believe that it is really rock dust ? Take up 

 a handful of the soil and examine it. It scarcely seems 

 possible that this powdery material was ever a rock. Yet 

 it was, although now it is something more for it is mixed 



