NATURE AND TREATMENT OF THE SOILS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 8

NATURE AND TREATMENT OF THE SOILS.

An interesting, and highly instructive wor,k o.n the properties, improvement, and maangement of the soil, and the problems of crop-growing and crop-feeding, entitled "Soils." by Mr Charles W. Burkett. director of the Agricultural Station, Kansas., has lately been published (sajs a-n exchange) by Orange Judd Company, New York. In this work — the result of long and careful study and practical experience — Mr Burkett tells in plain language the history of the- soil, the clothing of the earth. He describes this clothing as a changing one, and of as many colours as the coat of Jacob. The soil changes in texture, in wearing ability, and in usefulness. Not *nany soils had poverty for their inheritance, nor many others that had the fullest riches. Both kinds meet at a common -point, the rich having become poorer and the poor become richer. All soils contain four materials — sand, silt, clay, and humus — but they do not contain these materials in the same proportion, and herein lies the difference in their treatment, and the various crops for which they are best adapted. The necessity for good cultivation for .conserving moisture in the soil is fully dealt' with. The chapter on plant food, now it is preserved in the soil, what is available, and what is securely locked up will be of much interest to farmers, as will that on the role that tillage plays. In the latter, the kind of tillage for different crops is shown, and why one form of tillage is preferable to any other. Mr Burkett is a strong advocate for farm manure, and strongly recommends its careful conservation. Like all advanced agriculturists, he advises keeping all live stock, and making them the medium of conveying the-'greater pa.rt of the farm produce to market. In a table showing composition of average farm manures, next to hen manure that of the sheep is shown to i.c very much richer than that of any other farm animal. Mr Burkett is a staunch advocate of dairying, which he claims imnroves the soil. In his system of dairying, fodder crops are grown, and the cows are fed night and morning, tho skim milk is fed to calve? and pigs, and nothing is sent away but the butter. He describes dairyina; as a sort of fat-ooncentration process. The resultant product., which is butter-fat. is distilled from corn, alfalfa hay (and other materials used as food), through the agency of the dairy cow, the cream separator, and the churn, by means of which the distilling process is carried on. In illustration of his statement as to the superiority of dairying over grain-growing- he makes the following statement: — "If the dairyman harvests hay and grain as feed, and applies nothing whatever to the land to replace the fertility withdrawn, he will gradually reduce the fertility of the soil ; but the process ot tearjbpf clown will be slow. In 20 ye&i'S a wheat farm may be worn out by continual cropping, but to wear out a dairy farm to an eaual degree 7720 years will need to pass. Wheat-raising makes swift work in ruining lands, but dairying preserves th^em." For maintaining the land in a. high state of fertililv crop rotation and mixed farming, combined with proper cultivation, he regards as absolute 1 / neeessaj-y, ap.cj he sljojva the effect?

of several kinds of rotation. Space is dented to dry farming and to/ the treatment of^\orn-out =oils. The work i 3 written for the guidance of practical farmers.