Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1875 — Deep Cultivation. [ARTICLE]

Deep Cultivation.

The advocates of deep cultivation will read with satisQicJion the following remarks In9.de at a recent meeting of the Maidstone (England) Farmers’ Clubl Mr. Barling said he should confine his remarks chiefly to the principle of plowing. Plowing was a mechanical action, which was to bring about another action — a chemical actiorn A remark had been made that evening to which he attached much weight. It was possible to cultivate well without plowing, that was, that by moving the soil sufficiently they could bring about fertility without plowing. It was thus brought about : The organic matter within the soil was capable of being dissolved andbrouglitintoa soluble condition if it be sufficiently exposed to the oxygen in the air: but if they kept that organic matter sealed up by earth—it might be kept as many generations as they like—they would get nothing from it. The more they broke the soil and let in the oxygen of the air the quicker would the organic matter which they, or perhaps their grandfathers, had placed in the soil become soluble and the food of seeds which had been placed in that soil. The question of steam plowing as against horse plowin" seemed to come to this—it did not matter how they plowed, whether by animal force or the force of machinery. They might plow by turning over the sod or by breaking it up, but whatever they did, the object was to let in the air. In advocating deep cultivation Mr. Barling said that if they broke the soil low down—he did not say turn it over —they altered the condition of that soil; they rendered it warmer upon the whole. If they laid the thermometer on the land, it would be found that the better and the deeper the soil was broken up the warmer would be the land, and temperature was one of the elements favorable to the life of plants. Mr. Paine has remarked that they could not get rid of the water by deep cultivation ; but it would be better distributed, and land that has been thoroughly and deeply worked would, generally speaking, be moist, but not surcharged with water. Moisture was on© of the elements upon which vegetable life so greatly depends; an excess, was, however, harmful, but a certain quantity was needful. The land being warmer and moister must, oa principle, be greatly changed by deep cultivation. t * • »• • ; —Mr. James T, Fields proposes to men who have failed in their ambitious pursuits in other directions “ a new ambition” for them—namely, that of becoming pleasant to their fellow-creatures. The difliculty in the way is that ambitious people are generally so selfish that they never care whether they are pleasant to other people or not. What they want is that other people should be pleasant to them.