SITUATION AND SOIL 
55 
parched, the experienced gardener knows that it holds a 
quantity of what is called film water. On heating a little of 
the earth in a test tube, the glass becomes lined with tiny 
droplets that have been driven off from the apparently dry 
earth. To verify one’s conclusions and to get further advice, 
a sample may be sent for analysis to the state experiment 
station. Owing to the small quantity under inspection, how- 
ever, this method often fails to give satisfactory results. 
Another matter for consideration is to what extent various 
soils retain the rain. For testing this some simple scheme 
can be devised to show at what rate water will percolate 
through the different materials. A good way is to set up sev- 
eral lamp chimneys, putting a sample of earth in each, noting 
how the different samples behave when watered. A sandy 
soil, it will be seen, allows the water to filter through in almost 
no time. A clay soil, on the contrary, drains very slowly, some- 
times scarcely at all. Picture this on a grand scale and you 
have before you exactly what happens to the rainfall on a 
farm. In the first case the sandy earth would be left in a 
chronic state of drought, while in the second the water would 
settle in puddles. To take " any old soil ” and mix into it 
the ingredients necessary to make it fit for all-round garden 
purposes requires good sense and no little skill. Of course, 
where there is really no true soil foundation, but only a waste 
of bricks and rubbish, the problem is even more difficult, since 
in that case a garden is not merely made but built. In the 
case, too, of hopelessly rough land the stumps and stones 
will first have to be removed, perhaps by blasting. After- 
wards the humps and hollows can be leveled by spreading 
on a plentiful supply of loam, hauled by the cartload. 
The item of loam in the expense book need not be so 
very great. Indeed, for school gardens enough loam of suffi- 
cient riehness may usually be obtained free of charge from 
