1913. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
601 
A DISCUSSION OF SOILS: 
“By their fruits ye shall know them 5 ’ 
would apply to soils were there not so 
many misfits of plants to the land and 
other poor management that does not 
give the soil a chance to do its best. A 
farm well known to the writer was for 
many years held in contempt on account 
of its unproductiveness until a real 
farmer finally came into possession who 
had the good sense to get acquainted 
with its varieties of soil and their adap¬ 
tability to certain plants, and to-day this 
farm ranks well in productiveness with 
the farms of the neighborhood, while 
its ill repute of a decade or two ago is 
apparently forgotten. 
In a discussion of soils we regard fer¬ 
tility in the sense of the inherent capa¬ 
bilities of the soil rather than its per 
cent of nutrient material as shown by 
chemical analysis. Productiveness is in 
most cases due more to the physical 
conditions which regulate the supply of 
air and water and bacterial life, than to 
the amount of nutrients, which cannot 
be appropriated by plants in the absence 
of nitrification. So certain truckers call 
their sandy soil fertile, because “hand¬ 
some is as handsome does,” and they 
find great profit in using the soil as a 
sort of factory, into which they must 
put a good deal of the raw material for 
manufacturing plants which appreciate 
that environment. Other growers find 
muck better adapted to their celery, 
lettuce, spinach and onions, and crops 
that like a loose mixture of decaying 
organic matter. There are many vari¬ 
eties of muck lands, and while admit¬ 
ting to having had less experience with 
them than other soils, it is safe to say 
that their capabilities depend largely 
upon the degree of decomposition of 
their organic matter and the opportu¬ 
nity for maintaining a water table near 
the surface, as muck has much less 
power of capillarity than have soils with 
a greater per cent of earthy material. 
The most lasting soil I ever knew was 
the dark prairie land of Minnesota. 18 
inches to two feet deep, of dark, mellow 
loam, lying on a limestone subsoil. 
While living in cold Douglass County, 
ISO miles northwest of Saint Paul, I 
remember helping a neighbor thrash 22 
bushels of Spring wheat per acre from 
a field that had borne 20 consecutive 
crops of wheat without any fertilizing 
and always Fall-plowed. There was 
most desirable of our Eastern soils for 
corn, potatoes, Winter wheat, clover, 
peas, beans, tomatoes, squashes and mel¬ 
ons, and most kinds of fruits, including 
all kinds of berries, cherries and cur¬ 
rants. Here in the “Chautauqua Belt” 
it produces excellent crops of grapes, 
but is inferior to clay for oats or Tim¬ 
othy hay. Excepting for the last two 
crops mentioned, I unhesitatingly call 
this the best all-around Eastern soil I 
have known. The best apple orchard 
A VINE-CLAD COUNTRY HOME. Fig. 158. 
very little of “fitting the plant to the 
land” there, as nature had dealt alike 
with the “just and the unjust” in soil 
distribution as well as rainfall, and 
whole farms and sections had the same 
variety of land. 
The alluvial soils in the valleys of 
streams can usually be depended on to 
give good returns for labor if not com¬ 
posed of too many sand bars thrown up 
by the shifting stream. Some of these, 
however, are open to the objection of 
being subject to overflow and conse¬ 
quent destructon of crops. A naturally 
drained, gravelly loam is one of the 
I ever knew was on this kind of land, 
and peaches are at their best on this 
soil, in a favorable climate, and they 
show as decided a preference for sand 
over clay as does the apple for clay 
over sand. 
All fertile soils are disintegrated rock 
plus humus and moisture. A soil’s fer¬ 
tility on our uplands may be measured 
more or less correctly with the eye by 
noting its shade of coloring. If it has 
the proper humus content the coloring 
will be much darker than when deficient 
in organic matter. Moisture conserva¬ 
tion often changes a hitherto unproduc¬ 
tive soil into a perfect glory of fruit¬ 
fulness, and it is the opinion of many 
orchardists (who find tillage in their 
orchards superior to a sod mulch) that 
Mr. Hitchings’ success is due more to 
an unusual moisture*supply than to any 
ether natural soil condition. Thin clay 
soils with a hardpan near the surface 
are less responsive to good treatment 
than those of greater depth, and are 
classed with the undesirables. To an 
inexperienced man who contemplates be¬ 
ing his own farm manager, a thorough 
study of some good treatise on soils 
should be considered an essential part 
of his training if he is to buy well or 
manage wisely after buying. The in¬ 
experienced men of my acquaintance 
who have made good from the land have 
been men with a business training, who 
had the sagacity to apply good business 
principles to the production and sale in 
a large commercial way of some farm 
commodity commanding a good sale in 
the markets. The services of farm man¬ 
agers well acquainted with soils and 
crops and farm management have had 
no small part in their success. This 
does not make as interesting reading for 
a “back-to-the-land” enthusiast as some 
of the glowing accounts they see of 
easy money to be made from the land, 
without a farm training, but after more 
than 20 years soil study from field and 
book as farmer and drainage engineer 
I cannot with honesty to the enquirer 
make it any brighter. The work or en¬ 
gineering land drainage has put me in 
close touch with farmers and farm con¬ 
ditions and has given me the opportu¬ 
nity of seeing from two to four feet in 
depth of soil removed from twenty-five 
miles of ditch per season through land 
that was for the most part under culti¬ 
vation. J. F. VAN SCHOONHOVEN. 
A VINE-CLAD HOME. 
Mr. E. C. Shaffer, of Preston Co., 
W. Va., sends us the picture shown at 
Fig. 158. Mr. Shaffer says, “This is a 
picture of my home, which The R. 
N.-Y. helped to make.” We print it 
partly to show how a country dweller 
may easily beautify the home by simple 
combinations of vines and shrubs. Such 
things not only make life worth while, 
but they make the property more val¬ 
uable. 
FIFTY YEARS’ UNPARALLELED RECORD, BOTH IN THE FIELD AND WITH THE EXPERIMENT STATIONS 
THE MAPES MANURES 
ABSOLUTELY CHOICEST OF MATERIALS, SEASONING. AND BEST METHODS OF MANUFACTURE 
AVAILABILITY WITHOUT ACIDITY NO ROCK OR ACID PHOSPHATES USED 
IN THE FIELD 
The record of The Mapes Manures in the field is too well known among our thousands of customers and friends, and with us we 
are glad to say the terms are practically interchangeable, as most of our good old customers have become our friends to require more than 
a reference to it. 
WITH THE EXPERIMENT STATIONS 
We are equally proud of our Record with the Stations. There may at times have been an occasional chance analysis which was 
not quite what we would have liked to have seen, and not as we believe fairly representative of our goods, but with the grand average we 
have no fault to find. 
This is in spite of the fact that Station methods and valuations from the very nature of the case must be broadly general to ap¬ 
ply to the general average of the class of goods examined, and can therefore never be expected to do entire justice to the user of particularly 
choice materials and unusual methods of manufacture. 
From the Annual Report of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, FERTILIZERS, 1912: 
“MAPES FORMULA AND PERUVIAN GUANO CO.’S fifteen brands all fully meet their guarantees, with the exception of No. 553, in which a 
deficiency of 0.37 per cent, of Potash is fully offset by an overrun of 0.7 per cent. Nitrogen.” 
So strong a statement is not aim could not be made of any firm which had an equal or greater number of brands. 
From Annual Bulletin No. 113, December, 1912, Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station. Inspection of Commercial Fertilizers: 
(It publishes a table giving summary of results of analysis of complete fertilizers as compared with manufacturers’ guarantees). 
“MAPES FORMULA AND PERUVIAN GUANO CO. Number of brands analyzed, IS; number equal to guarantee in commercial value, 18.’ 
That is, every one of The Mapes Brands are found to be equal to their guarantee in commercial value, and of no other company 
having an equal or a greater number of brands can this be said. 
It publishes another table bearing on the Nitrogen in the different brands analyzed. The Mapes F. & P. G. Co. show 90.26% 
as their percentage Activity of Total Nitrogen, which is the essential point. No other concern having an equal number or greater 
number of brands analyzed has anything like so high a percentage Activity of Total Nitrogen. 
It is unnecessary to say that The Mapes Manures have always been, and will always continue to be, while under the same man¬ 
agement, far above the average of fertilizers offered for sale. 
In speaking of this management, it is certainly interesting that not only have the Mapeses continued successively in the business 
lor three generations, grandfather, father and son, but the Lanes, who have been associated with the Mapeses from the start, follow the 
same identical record in the business, grandfather, father and son, successively, and we ask—can our friends and customers have a better 
guarantee than this family management that everything has been done and will continue to be done to make the Mapes Manures as good 
as the present knowledge of fertilizer science permits for the crops for which they are intended. 
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THE MAPES FORMULA & PERUVIAN GUANO COMPANY, 143 Liberty St., New York 
