Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
121 
who said of the prairies of the west, that “if the earth he but tick- 
eled with a hoe, she laughs with a harvest. 11 But it is a laugh of 
derision, that man, after the use of such inadequate means should 
expect anything but the meagre harvest that is a full reward for the 
labor bestowed. 
It is well that the farmers of Wisconsin are learning to prize 
more highly the manure made upon the farm. They will have 
learned another valuable lesson when they fully realize the impor¬ 
tance of better mechanical cultivation of the soil. 
Professor Daistiells. I want to say in regard to deeper and better 
cultivation, I mean mechanical cultivation and stirring the soil, 1 
believe it is the one thing we fail in most completely. 
Go through the corn-fields in the dry season, and we have per¬ 
haps nine inches of soil. That is fine near the surface, and after 
resting on the sub-soil, impervious to air and moisture, which never 
was stirred at all, and through which the moisture cannot pene¬ 
trate downward or upward, what can w r e expect from such a 
soil? It can only furnish the moisture which takes hold of those 
few inches, and the moment that moisture is used up by the crop 
in cultivation, or is evaporated away by the sun’s heat, and it is car¬ 
ried away very rapidly by this means, there is no longer any source 
from which the plant can get water, nor can the roots by any pos¬ 
sible means get to water; they are kept separate as if by walls be¬ 
tween them. 
We need to have deeper cultivation, we need to have the soil stir¬ 
red deeper. The trouble is not with the soil, but it is not stirred 
deep enough, for it Could hold more water if it was so shaped that 
the water could not get away. Then plants could not possibly 
grow there, simply because the water was there, shutting out the 
air from the soil and cooling the soil down to too low a tempera¬ 
ture. 
All that is needed is simply thorough cultivation—not of a few 
inches of soil only, but thorough, deep cultivation of the soil—and 
it is of a great deal more importance that this should be done, that 
it should be stirred deep and often so that it is porous, than that we 
should apply manure to the soil. If the soils have an abundance 
of material within them, and if you will simply get the conditions, 
so that these natural agents, the air, carbonic acid gas in the water, 
and the oxygen, and all the elements of the air may come in 
