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We plow the ground and plant the seed and cultivate and harvest the crop, but I do not know what the corn crop, or any crop, takes from the soil. I want to learn how to analyze the soil and crop and to find out, if possible, why soils become poor, in order, as Lincoln suggests, that the cause may be discovered and remedied."
Fruits suitable to our soils and climates are being imported from all the countries of the Old World the fig from Turkey, the almond from Spain, the date from Algeria, the mango from India. We are helping our fruit growers to get their crops into European markets by studying methods of preservation through refrigeration, packing, and handling, which have been quite successful.
He said that the soil water alone dissolved plenty of plant food from all soils for the production of good crops, and that the supply of plant food will be permanently maintained, because the plant food contained in the subsoil far below where the roots go is being brought to the surface by the rise of the capillary moisture, and that there is in fact a steady tendency toward an accumulation of plant food in the surface soil.
We must not confound the salt disseminated in these clayey soils with that contained in the sands of the seashore, on the coasts of Normandy. These phenomena, considered in a geognostical point of view, have scarcely any properties in common. I have seen muriatiferous clay at the level of the ocean at Punta Araya, and at two thousand toises' height in the Cordilleras of New Grenada.
This test is simple and inexpensive, and at the present time most county agent offices are equipped with this apparatus or a similar one for testing soils for farmers. Some newer methods are being devised, and doubtless this method will be improved upon as time passes, but the Truog test has qualities of accuracy and simplicity which will always make it valuable. Nature's Provision.
I am inclined to believe that the latter is the case, as cultivation and the clearings of the forest proceed; for I have observed within fifteen years the total drying up of streamlets by the removal of the forest, and these streamlets had evidently once been rivulets and even rivers of some size, as their banks, cut through alluvial soils, plainly indicated.
To ally any feeling of this sort that might tend to excite those who are so emotional as even to love their own grandchildren, some sort of soothing syrup should be administered. A preparation put out by the Chief of the United States Bureau of Soils and fully endorsed by the great optimist, the Secretary of Agriculture, is recommended as an article very much superior to Mrs. Winslow's.
But though unused to labor, ignorant of agriculture, unacquainted with tools or seeds or soils, knowing nothing of the ways of life in permanent houses or of the laws of health, scantily fed, often utterly discouraged by failure, they are still making a noble fight for existence.
Let him study its plants, its animals, its soils and rocks; and last, but not least, its scenery, as the total outcome of what the soils, and plants, and animals, have made it. I say, have made it.
A system of farming that involves the application of manure, thorough tillage, drainage where needed, and the free use of sods in some way, has kept portions of these non-calcareous soils out of the distinctly acid class. Clover grows satisfactorily, grass sods are heavy, and there is no acute lime problem.
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