114 
Annual Report of the 
manures, and performs all the various operations that are included 
under the term “cultivation,” regarded in its widest sense, includ¬ 
ing all the processes in use for the hastening of plant growth by 
the amelioration of the soil. 
A soil is rock, that by the slow but constant action of natural 
forces, heat, moisture and the atmosphere has become disintegrated. 
Upon such pulverized rock plants have grown for innumerable 
years, and the decomposition of these plants upon the soil has sup¬ 
plied the surface with a stratum that is largely mixed with organic 
matter. This stratum is the arable soil which contains the greater 
part of the food that is immediately available to plants. It is that 
which is popularly known as the so?7, and with which the farmer 
has to deal in his efforts to secure an abudant supply of nourish- 
ment for his crops, for to that end are all his efforts directed. 
How is it, that the purpose sought is accomplished by the means 
used ? 
Nothing is added to the soil by plowing or harrowing, cultivat¬ 
ing or hoeing. A field contains nothing after these operations have 
been performed that was not there before, and yet these are the 
means employed to supply through the soil, from year to year, that 
which, by the wonderful magic of plant-growth, shall bring the 
harvest with its hundred fold. 
The mineral matter in agricultural plants is but a small per cent, 
of their total weight, and yet it is to supply that small proportion, 
the ash-ingredients and the nitrogen compounds, that all the labor 
of tilling is required. This food must all be taken up by the plant 
through its roots, and consequently must be in solution as it passes 
into the plant. But these ash-ingredients are many of them pres¬ 
ent in even the most fertile soils in exceedingly small proportions, 
so that if they existed in soils in a soluble form entirely, the large 
quantity of water that falls and is discharged through the soil 
would carry them away in solution, and the richest soil would thus 
soon become comparatively barren. Instead of being present in a 
soluble form, however, they are there mostly in the form of rock, 
which is affected but slightly by pure water. 
Now the chief end to be gained by such mechanical operations 
•as those of tilling the soil, is to supply to .the plant these insoluble 
rock-ingredients of its food. 
Every farmer understands that his soil is not in good condition 
