8 
25 
soil becomes at all dry. Finely pulverized 
soil will hold moisture, but it will not hold 
water. Moisture is finely divided water. 
When water is thus finely divided, it will 
not form ice; the moist soil may freeze 
hard and solid, but there is no ice and no 
irregular expansion which occurs when 
water freezes, and which ruptures the roots, 
and heaves the plants when the wet soil is 
frozen. Coarse soil parts with its water 
very quickly because of the large quantity 
of air held between the fragments and 
which soon absorbs the water and leaves 
the lumps hard and dry so that the roots 
perish and the plants are “winter-killei,” 
as it is called. Or in the freezing of the 
water contained between the large particles 
the roots are torn apart, and the plants are 
left loose upon the surface; withered and 
dead. One more reason may be given, 
which is a most important one. Plants— 
as animals do—live by food; and they reach 
their food by sending out roots in search of 
it. They get no food in any other way. 
It follows then, that the more roots a plant 
bas, the more food it can acquire from the 
soil; and, equally, the finer the soil is, the 
more roots there will be, and the more soil 
and plant food they will come in contact 
with. We might illustrate this fact in a 
simple manner. A lot of fowls are shut up 
-in a place where a quantity of wheat is 
kept in sacks, and no other way of procur¬ 
ing food is offered to them. Necessarily 
they must subsist upon the few grains they 
can pick out through the meshes of the 
sackcloth. They would soon starve. But 
let us tear open these sacks and afford 
access to the grain, and the fowls will soon 
fill themselves. Precisely in a similiar man¬ 
ner, the farmer who offers to his wheat 
plants, the richest soil, in the shape of hard 
lumps and clods, will find his crop starving 
in the midst of abundance, and being weak 
and unable to resist severe cold or hard¬ 
ships of the winter, they perish. But if 
the farmer breaks up these hard lumps of 
of rich food, his crops revel in abundance, 
and grow and thrive luxuriantly, and laugh 
at the rigors of the season; either the cold 
and floods of the winter, or the heat and 
drouths of summer. Of course, the very 
;same principle applies to the manure given 
to the wheat which should be equally well 
pulverized and mingled with soil. 
It has been a too common practice among 
agricultural writers and teachers to make 
farmers believe that the frosts and thaws 
of winter will do this work for them, and 
will crumble down the soil and make it 
fine and mellow and fit for the needs of the 
wheat. Alas ! this is a fatal mistake; and 
is opposed to fact and all precedent. The 
farmer who depends upon nature to do his 
work will always be disappointed. Nat¬ 
ure is opposed to man, and has been since 
the time when it began to bring forth thorns 
and thistles to compel him to labor. Man’s 
life and work are a constant struggle with 
nature, and he who strives the best, will 
have the most success in his work. The 
fanner therefore, must use every means in 
his power to aid and assist nature to do 
his work, and in regard to the preparation 
of the soil for his wheat crop, he must do 
this by first enriching his soil, and then 
bringing it into the condition of fineness, 
mellowness and firmness which the wheat 
plant require*. 
The universal testimony of the best farm¬ 
ers, is in favor of this thorough working of 
the soil, and its exceedingly profitable re¬ 
sults. Wherever the culture of the soil is 
perfect, crops are large, and this thorough 
culture is the key to successful growth of 
wheat. It costs money, no doubt, to do 
this work, and more especially when the 
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