The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1905-01-27
A Visit to a Nearby King
dom.
By c, D. smith. OF the Agricultural collss

1
which they need in their growth They
can take mineral matters, in solution
only The water gets the plant food,
this mineral matter, from the particles
OF soil with which it is in contact. 1t
dissoives the mineral matter from the
soil kernels which the films of water
surround. The more finely divided
these soil kernels are the more readily
the water can dissolve the mineral
matter.
Some years ago a French scientist,
Pelouze, boiled water in bottle for
five days, changing the water daily,
trying to get the water to dissolve some
of the glass but the bottle lost but two
grains in weight. He then broke off the
neck of the bottle and ground it into the
finest powder. He next boiled this
powdered glass in water in the body of
the task and found that, although glass
is not soluble in water, except to the
very smallest extent, he was able to
dissolve, during five more days fully
one third of the weight of the flask
The soil is composed, as we have seen,
of powdered rock. If we should take
this rock in large pieces, like our field
stones and soak them in water for
weeks, we should dissolve little or
nothing from them but it has been
shown that when ground into a fine
powder and simply soaked in water for
a week there would be dissolved as
much as one pound out of each hundred
weight. The upper foot of soil of an
acre weighs not far from 1000, 900
pounds and you can readily see that at
this rate there would be dissolved in a
week in an acre fully 10000 pounds
from the soil grains. This is vastly
moro than any crop could possibly use
| If two samples of soil have exactly
the same chemical composition, it is
quite possible that plants wou Id find
J food enough in the soil water where
the grains were fine and would starve
for want of needed mineral matter if
the kernels were coarse. 1t must not be
understood that water does not pene-
trate the soil kernels themselves because,
with even the smallest particles built up
into kernels, there are still openings
thrsuga which wate1~ can enter them
and dissolve mineral mat ers.
Professor f. III, King, of Madison,
NH fHn ..cf nf
Agriculture" should be in the hands of
every farmer, tells us in that volume
that scientists have even gone so far as
to estimate closely the thickness of the
water films in some fertile soils out of
which all surplus water has been drained
and have found it to be about half the
thickness of the walls of soap bubble
| just before it bursts or approximately
so thin that AZ, $50 times its thickness
would equal one inch, yet this thin film
when spread over all the surfaces in the
cubic foot of soil would furnish water
enough to equal four inches deep of
water on the upper surface of the cubic
foot of soil. Here are some figures that
we ought to remember:
There are 43, $50 square feet in an
acre
A cubic foot of water weighs 62 AZ
pounds
A cubic foot of soil weighs, if of fer.
tile clay loan, 79pounds, if dry sand 10
pounds, if half clay and half sand, 96
pounds
The surface soil is lighter in weight
than the subsoil deeper in the earth.
Rich garden soil is lighter than clay and
soil from swamps, full of peat OF muck
is still lighter. 1T is safe to call the
weight of the upper foot of soil on an
acre of average loam as about 1000, 600
pounds.
We have seen that the water in the
soil clings to the surface of the soil
kernels and particles. 1t should be said
that in many soils there remains after
every rain more water than can be thus
retained and such water may stay in the
soil to fill up the pore spaces between
the kernels, thus excluding air and in
juring the soil in other ways, destroying,
possibly, the granular structure and
even washing out much of the plant
food already dissolved by the water
films. The wise farmer removes this
surplus water by draining. 1t is inter-
esting to note the quantity of water
retained by fertile soils when in the
best condition for yielding heaviest
crops. Sixteen pounds per cubic foot
would be good amount for "a sandy
loan, eighteen pounds for cubic foot
of clay loan and as high as twenty-five
or even more pounds for very mucky
soil, or something more than three
inches deep over the surface on the
loans and five inches for the muck.
The sandy loan would, under these
conditions, hold seventeen pounds of
water per hundred weight, the clay
loan over twenty-five pounds and the