uch
less manure is employed.

[How should field plowing be conducted?

How does such treatment affect soils previously limed?

How may it sometimes improve sandy or clay soils?]

The course to be pursued in such cases is to _plow one inch deeper each
year_. By this means the soil maybe gradually deepened to any desired
extent. The amount of uncongenial soil which will thus be brought up, is
slight, and will not interfere at all with the fertility of the soil,
while the elevated portion will become, in one year, so altered by
exposure, that it will equal the rest of the soil in fertility.

Often where lime has been used in excess, it has sunk to the subsoil,
where it remains inactive. The slight deepening of the surface plowing
would mix this lime with the surface-soil, and render it again useful.

When the soil is light and sandy, resting on a heavy clay subsoil, or
clay on sand, the bringing up of the mass from below will improve the
texture of the soil.

As an instance of the success of deep plowing, we call to mind the case
of a farmer in New Jersey, who had a field which had yielded about
twenty-five bushels of corn per acre. It had been cultivated at ordinary
depths. After laying it out in eight step lands (24 feet), he plowed it
at all depths from five to ten inches, on the different lands, and
sowed oats evenly over the whole field. The crop on the five inch soil
was very poor, on the six inch rather better, on the seven inch better
still, and on the ten inch soil it was as fine as ever grew in New
Jersey; it had stiff straw and broad leaves, while the grain was also
much better than on the remainder of the field.

[What kind of soils are benefited by fall plowing?]

There is an old anecdote of a man who died, leaving his sons with the
information that he had buried a pot of gold for them, somewhere on the
farm. They commenced digging for the gold, and dug over the whole farm
to a great depth without finding the gold. The digging, however, so
enriched the soil that they were fully compensated for their
disappointment, and became wealthy from the increased produce of their
farm.

Farmers will find, on experiment, that they have gold buried in their
soil, if they will but dig deep enough to obtain it. The law gives a man
the ownership of the soil for an indefinite distance from the surface,
but few seem to realize that there is _another farm_ below the one they
are cultivating, which is quite as valuabl