THE ULTIMATE COMPARISON
WILKES was at the side gate to meet Adelaide and Percy, and the
grandmother stood at the door as they reached the veranda.
"Lucky for us you got back before the Thanksgiving scraps are all
gone," she said to Percy, "but I suppose even our Thanksgiving fare
will be poor picking after you've been living in Washington and
Boston."
"Even the Thanksgiving dinner on the boat was not equal to this,"
said Percy, as they sat down to the table loaded with such an
abundance of good things as is rarely seen except on the farmer's
table. The "scraps," if such there were, had no appearance of being
left-overs, and there was monster turkey, browned to perfection and
sizzling hot, placed before Mr. West ready for the carving knife.
Percy had opened the letter from the chemist, but said to Mr. West
that it would take him an hour or more to compute the results to the
form of the actual elements and reduce them to pounds per acre in
order to make possible a direct comparison between the requirements
of crops, on the one hand, and the invoice of the soil and
application of plant food in manure and fertilizers, on the other
hand.
"Please let me help you make the computations," said Adelaide, much
to the surprise of her parents, who knew that she took no interest
in affairs pertaining to farming. "I like mathematics and will
promise not to make any mistakes if you will tell me how to do some
of the figuring."
"Thank you," said Percy. "With your help it will take only half the
time that I should require alone."
This proved to be correct, for in half an hour after supper they had
the results in simplified form. Even the mother and grandmother
joined the circle as Percy began to discuss the results with Mr.
West
"Now here is the invoice," said Percy, "of the surface soil from an
acre of land where we collected the first composite sample,--the
land which you said had not been cropped since you could remember.
This soil contains plant food as follows:
1,440 pounds of nitrogen
380 pounds of phosphorus
15,760 pounds of potassium
3,340 pounds of magnesium
10,420 pounds of calcium
"I'd like to know how these amounts compare with what your Illinois
soil contains," said Mr. West.
"We have several different kinds of soil in Illinois," replied
Percy. "The common corn belt prairie soil is called brown silt loam.
It contains, as an average, 5000 pounds of nitrogen and 1200 pounds
of phosphorus, or nearly four times as much of each of those
elements as this Virginia soil which you say is too poor to
cultivate.
"I wrote to the Illinois Experiment Station before I left Washington
to see if I could get the average composition of the heavier prairie
soil, which occupies the very flat areas that were originally
swampy, and one of the letters you had received for me gives 8000
pounds of nitrogen and 2000 pounds of phosphorus as the general
average for that soil. That is our most productive land, and it
contains about five times as much of these two very important
elements as your poorest land.
"Our more common Illinois prairie contains about 35,000 pounds of
potassium, 9,000 pounds of magnesium, and I 1,000 pounds of calcium.
This is more than twice as much potassium and nearly three times as
much magnesium as in your poorest land, but the calcium content is
about the same in your soil as in ours. However, as you will
remember, your soil is distinctly acid and consequently markedly in
need of lime, the magnesium and calcium evidently being contained in
part in the form of acid silicates with no carbonates; whereas, our
brown silt loam is a neutral soil and our black clay loam contains
much calcium carbonate, the same compound as pure limestone."
"I am anxious to know about our best land," said Mr. West. "What
did the chemist find in the soil from the slope where we get the
best corn after breaking up the old pastures?"
"He found the following amounts in the surface soil," said Percy.
800 pounds of nitrogen
1,660 pounds of phosphorus
34, 100 pounds of potassium
8,500 pounds of magnesium
13,100 pounds of calcium
"Rich in everything but nitrogen," Percy continued, "richer than our
common prairies in phosphorus and calcium, and nearly as rich in
potassium and magnesium; but very, very poor in nitrogen. Legume
plants ought to grow well on that land, because the minerals are
present in abundance, and, while lack of nitrogen in the soil will
limit the yield of all grains and grasses, there is no nitrogen
limit for the legume plants if infected with the proper
nitrogen-fixing bacteria, provided, of course, that the soil is not
acid. You will remember, however, that even this sloping land is
more or less acid, although here and there we found pieces of
undecomposed limestone. With a liberal use of ground limestone, any
legumes suited to this soil and climate ought to grow luxuriantly on
those slopes."
"That reminds me that we are greatly troubled with Japan clover on
those slopes," said Mr. West. "Of course it makes good pasture for a
few months, but it doesn't come so early in the spring as blue grass
and it is killed with the first heavy frost in the fall. We like
blue grass much better for that reason, but when we seed down for
meadow and pasture, the Japan clover always crowds out the timothy
and blue grass on those slopes."
"And when you plow under the Japan clover, you get one or two good
crops of grain," said Percy, "because this clover has stored up some
much needed nitrogen and the soil is rich in all other necessary
elements. Have you ever tried alfalfa on that kind of land? That is
a crop that ought to do well there, especially if limestone were
applied."
"Yes, I have tried alfalfa," replied Mr. West, "and I tried it on a
strip that ran across one of those steep slopes; but it failed
completely, and, as I remember it, it was poorer on that hillside
than on the more level land."
"Did you inoculate it?" Percy asked.
"Inoculate it? No. I didn't do anything to it, but just sow it the
same as I sow red clover."
"What does it mean to inoculate it?" asked Adelaide.
"It means to put some bugs on it," said the grandmother; "some germs
or microbes, or whatever they are called. Don't you remember,
Adelaide, that I told you about that when I read it in the magazine
a while ago? Don't you remember that somebody was making it and a
man could carry enough in his vest pocket to fertilize an acre and
he wanted $2 a package. Charles said that $1.50 a hundred was more
than he could afford to pay for fertilizer, and he didn't care to
pay $2 for a vest pocket package. Isn't that the stuff, Mr.
Johnston?"
"It listens like it, as the Swedes say," said Percy, "but the
advertisements of these germ cultures put out by commercial
interests are usually very misleading. The safest and best and least
expensive method of inoculating a field for alfalfa is to use
infested soil taken from some old alfalfa field or from a patch of
ground where the common sweet clover, or mellilotus, has been
growing for several years. I saw the sweet clover growing along the
railroad near Montplain, and there is one patch on the roadside
right where--when you enter the valley on the way to the station."
"Right where Adelaide smashed that nigger's eye with her heel and
helped Mr. Johnston capture them both," broke in the grandmother.
"That's the only good thing I can say for her peg heeled shoes."
Adelaide colored and Percy now understood what had been a puzzle to
him.
"The same bacteria," he went on quickly, "live upon both the sweet
clover and the alfalfa, or at least they are interchangeable. These
bacteria are not a fertilizer in any ordinary sense, but they are
more in the nature of a disease, a kind of tuberculosis, as it were;
except that they do much more good than harm. They attack the very
tender young roots of the alfalfa and feed upon the nutritious sap,
taking from it the phosphorus and other minerals and also the sugar
or other carbohydrates needed for their own nourishment, since they
have no power to secure carbon and oxygen from the air, as is done
by all plants with green leaves. On the other hand, these bacteria
have power to take the free nitrogen of the air, which enters the
pores of the soil to some extent, and cause it to combine with food
materials which are secured from the alfalfa sap, and thus the
bacteria secure for themselves both nitrogen and the other essential
plant foods. The alfalfa root or rootlet becomes enlarged at the
point attacked by the bacteria, and a sort of wart or tubercle is
formed which resembles a tiny potato, as large as clover seed on
clover or alfalfa, and, singularly, about as large as peas on
cowpeas or soy beans. On plants that are sparsely infected, these
tubercles develop to a large size and often in clusters. While the
bacteria themselves are extremely small and can be seen only by the
aid of a powerful microscope, the tubercles in which they live are
easily seen, and they are sufficient to enable us to know whether
the plants are infected."
"I wish you would tell me the difference between the words
inoculated and infected," said Adelaide.
"Inoculated is used in the active sense and infected in the
passive," said Percy. "Thus the red clover growing in the field is
infected if there are tubercles on its roots, although it may never
have been inoculated; and we inoculate alfalfa because it would not
be likely to become infected without direct inoculation."
"Under favorable conditions," continued Percy, "these bacteria
multiply with tremendous rapidity, somewhat as the germs of small
pox or yellow fever multiply if allowed to do so. A single tubercle
may contain a million germs which if distributed uniformly over an
acre would furnish more than twenty bacteria for every square foot."
"There, Charles," said the grandmother, "wouldn't a vest pocketful
of those bugs or germs be a big enough dose for one acre?"
"Well, but they're not a fertilizer, Mother," said Mr. West, "and
besides Mr. Johnston says it is better to use the infected sweet
clover soil and there is no need of paying $2 an acre for something
we knew nothing about, and especially on land that is not worth more
than $2 an acre."
"I don't care what it's worth," she replied, "some of it cost your
grandfather $68 an acre, and it will never be sold for any $2, while
I have any say so about it."
They waited for Percy to proceed.
"The individual bacteria are very short-lived," he continued, "and
products of decay soon begin to accumulate in the tubercles. These
products contain, in combined form, nitrogen which the bacteria have
taken from the air, and in this form it is taken from the tubercles
and absorbed through the roots into the host plant and thus serves
as a source of nitrogen for all of the agricultural legumes.
"It should be kept in mind, of course, that the red clover has one
kind of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, that the cowpea has a different
kind, and that the soy bean bacteria are still different, while a
fourth kind lives on the roots of alfalfa and sweet clover."
"How much infected sweet clover soil would I need to inoculate an
acre of land for alfalfa?" asked Mr. West.
"If the soil is thoroughly infected, a hundred pounds to the acre
will do very well if applied at the same time the alfalfa seed is
sown and immediately harrowed in with the seed. If allowed to lie
for several hours or days exposed to the sunshine after being spread
over the land the bacteria will be destroyed, for like most
bacteria, such as those which lurk in milk pails to sour the milk,
they are killed by the sunshine."
" That's right," said the grandmother. "That's the way to sterilize
milk pails and pans and crocks. I like crocks better than pans. They
don't have any sort of joints to dig out."
"Of course," continued Percy, "a wagon load of infected soil will
make a more perfect inoculation than a hundred pounds, and where it
costs nothing but the hauling it is well to use a liberal amount."
"How deep should it be taken?" asked Mr. West.
"About the same depth as you would plow. The tubercles are mostly
within six or eight inches of the surface. The bacteria depend upon
the nitrogen of the air and this must enter the surface soil.
Sometimes in wet weather the tubercles can be found almost at the
surface of the ground, and when the ground cracks one can often find
tubercles sticking out in the cracks an inch or two beneath the
surface but protected from direct sunshine.
"These bacteria have power to furnish very large amounts of nitrogen
to such a crop as alfalfa. The Illinois Station reports having grown
eight and one-half tons of alfalfa per acre in one season. It was
harvested in four cuttings. The hay itself was worth at least $6 a
ton above all expenses, which would bring $51 an acre net profit for
one year. Of course this was above the average, which is only about
four and one-half tons over a series of several years. But suppose
you can save only three tons and get $6 a ton net for it, as you
could easily do by feeding it to your cattle and sheep. That would
bring $18 an acre or six per cent. interest on $300 land. I am
altogether confident that this could be done on your sloping
hillsides, with their rich supplies of phosphorus and other mineral
foods, provided, of course, that you use plenty of ground limestone
and thoroughly inoculate the soil."
"Well, I shall certainly try alfalfa again," said Mr. West, "and if
I can grow such crops of alfalfa as you think on the hillsides, I
can have much more farm manure produced for the improvement of the
rest of the land. By the way what did that chemist find in that
sample you took of the other land where it does not wash so much as
on the steeper slopes."
"He found the following:
1,030 pounds of nitrogen
1,270 pounds of phosphorus
16,500 pounds of potassium
7,460 pounds of magnesium
16,100 pounds of calcium
"Well, the phosphorus is not so low," said Mr. West.
"Fully equal to that in our $150 Illinois prairie," replied Percy,
"and again the calcium is more than ours, with magnesium not far
below, and potassium half our supply. Nitrogen is plainly the most
serious problem on most of this farm, and limestone and legumes must
solve that problem if properly used."
"Do you think this land could be made as valuable as the Illinois
land just by a liberal use of limestone and legumes?" asked
Adelaide.
"I should have some doubt about that," Percy replied. "Your very
level uplands that neither lose nor receive material from surface
washing are very deficient in phosphorus and much poorer than ours
in potassium and magnesium; and your undulating and steeply sloping
lands are more or less broken, with many rock outcrops on the points
and some impassable gullies, which as a rule compel the cultivation
of the land in small irregular fields. A three-cornered field of
from two to fifteen acres can never have quite the same value per
acre as the land where forty or eighty acres of corn can be grown in
a body with no necessity of omitting a single hill. Then there is
some unavoidable loss from surface washing, so that to maintain the
supply of organic matter and nitrogen will require a larger use of
legumes than on level land of equal richness. In addition to this is
the initial difference in humus content. This is well measured by
the nitrogen content. While your soil contains eight hundred pounds
of nitrogen on the steeper slopes and one thousand pounds on the
more gently undulating areas, ours contains five thousand pounds in
the brown silt loam and eight thousand pounds in the heavier black
clay loam. This means that our Illinois prairie soil contains from
five to ten times as much humus, or organic matter, as your best
upland soil. To supply this difference in humus would require the
addition of from four hundred to eight hundred tons per acre of
average farm manure, or the plowing under of one hundred to two
hundred tons of air-dry clover. This represents the great reserve of
the Illinois prairie soils above the total supplies remaining in
your soils.
"Our farmers are still producing crops very largely by drawing on
this reserve. Of course most of this great supply of humus is very
old. It represents the organic residues most resistant to
decomposition; and, where corn and oats are grown exclusively, the
soil has reached a condition on many farms under which the
decomposition of the reserve organic matter is so slow that the
nitrogen liberated from its own decay and the minerals liberated
from the soil by the action of the decomposition products are not
sufficient to meet the requirements of large crops, and for this
reason alone some of our lands that are still rich are said to be
run down; but they only require a moderate use of clover or farm
manure or other fresh and active organic matter to at once restore
their productiveness to a point almost equal to the yields from the
virgin soil. Some Illinois farmers who have discovered this apparent
restoration have jumped to the conclusion that they have solved the
problem of permanently maintaining the fertility of the soil; and I
judge from a remark made by the Secretary of Agriculture that some
Iowa farmers have the same mistaken notions.
"These fresh supplies of active organic matter serve primarily as
soil stimulants, hastening the liberation of nitrogen from the
organic reserve and of minerals from the inorganic soil materials.
"Where one of the Eastern farmers has managed a farm under the
rotation system with the occasional use of clover or light
applications of farm manure,--where this has been continued until
the great reserve is largely gone, and the phosphorus supply greatly
depleted, then the land is truly run down, but not until then.
"Finally, land-plaster and quick-lime, still more powerful soil
stimulants, are often brought into the system to bring about a more
complete exhaustion of the soil reserves, and lastly the use of
small amounts of high-priced commercial fertilizers serves to put
the land in suitable condition for ultimate abandonment."
"Do you mean that commercial fertilizers injure the soil?" asked Mr.
West.
"Well, to some extent they injure the soil because they tend to
destroy the limestone and increase the acidity of the soil, and also
because they contain more or less manufactured land-plaster and thus
serve as soil stimulants; but the chief point to keep in mind
concerning the use of the common so-called complete commercial
fertilizer is that they are too expensive to permit their use in
sufficient quantities to positively enrich the soil. Thus the farmer
may apply two hundred pounds of such a fertilizer at a cost of $3.00
an acre, and then harvest a crop of wheat, two crops of hay, pasture
for another year or two, plow up the grounds for corn, apply another
two hundred pounds for the corn crop, follow with a crop of oats,
and then repeat. He thus harvests five crops and pastures a year or
two and applies perhaps four hundred pounds of fertilizer at a cost
of $6.00.
"As an average of the most common commercial fertilizers sold to the
farmers in the Eastern and Southern States, the four hundred pounds
would add to the soil seven pounds of nitrogen, fourteen pounds of
phosphorus and seven pounds of potassium, while a single
fifty-bushel crop of corn will remove from the soil ten times as
much nitrogen, five times as much potassium, and nearly as much
phosphorus as the total amounts applied in this six-year or
seven-year rotation.
"In this manner the farmer extends the time during which he can take
from the soil crops whose value exceed their cost. He applies only
one-fourth or possibly one-half as much of the most deficient
element as the crops harvested require, and thus he continues for a
longer time to 'work the land for all that's in it! '"
"Well, isn't that the limit?" said Adelaide, with emphasis on the
"isn't," for which she received a disapproving look from her mother,
so far as her almost angel-face could give such a look.
"So far as human ingenuity has yet devised," replied Percy, "this
system appears to be the limit; but this limit has not yet been
reached on any Westover soil. If anyone can devise a method for
extending this limit he should apply it on a type of soil covering
more than two-fifths of the total area of St. Mary County and more
than 45,000 acres of Prince George County, Maryland, some of which
almost adjoins the District of Columbia. This soil has been reduced
in fertility until it contains only one-third as much phosphorus as
your poorest land. I found a Western man who had come down to
Maryland a few years ago. He saw that beautiful almost level upland
soil, and it looked so good to him that he bought and kept buying
until he had 'squared out' a tract of eleven hundred acres. He
still had left money enough to fence the farm and to put the
buildings in good repair. He was a live-stock farmer from the West
who just knew from his own experience and from that of the Secretary
of Agriculture, in the use of a little clover or farm manure in
unlocking the great reserves of an almost virgin soil, that all his
Maryland farm needed was clover seed and live stock. Sheep
especially he knew to be great producers of fertility.
"He sowed the clover and grass seed and they germinated well. He
even secured a fine catch, but it failed to hold, as we say out
West. He tried again and again, and failed as often as he tried. He
showed me his best clover on a field that had received some manure
made from feed part of which was purchased, and that had also
received five hundred pounds per acre of hydrated lime, which he was
finally persuaded to use, after becoming convinced that
clover-growing on old abandoned land was not exactly as easy as
clover-growing on a 'run-down' farm of almost virgin soil in the
West."
"And was the clover good after that treatment?" asked Mr. West.
"No, not good," said Percy, "but in some places where the manure had
been applied to the high points, as is the custom of the Western
farmer, the yield of clover, weeds, and foul grass together must
have been nearly a half ton to the acre. Fortunately he waited to
fully stock his farm with cattle and sheep until he should have some
assurance of producing sufficient feed to keep them for a time at
least, instead of making the common mistake of the less experienced
farmer who goes to the country from the city, and who imagines that,
if he has plenty of stock on the farm, they must of necessity
produce abundance of manure with which to enrich his land for the
production of abundant crops."
"Well, now you'll have to show me," said the grandmother. "To my
way of thinking that's a pretty good kind of a notion for a farmer
to have, and I'd like to know what's wrong with it."
Again a shadow seemed to cross the sweet face as the mother's glance
turned from grandma to Adelaide.
"The system has some merit," replied Percy, "but it starts at the
wrong point in the circle. Cattle and sheep must first have feed
before they can produce the fertilizer with which to enrich the
soil; and people who would raise stock on poor land should always
produce a good supply of food before they procure the stock
requiring to be fed. There is probably no more direct route to
financial disaster than for one to insist upon over-stocking a farm
that is essentially worn out."
"But doesn't pasturing enrich the soil?" asked the grandmother.
"Pasturing may enrich the soil only in a single element of plant
food," said Percy. "In all other elements simple pasturing must
always contribute toward soil depletion. If the pasture herbage
contains a sufficient proportion of legume plants so that the
fixation of free nitrogen exceeds the utilization of nitrogen in
animal growth, then the soil will be enriched in that element,
although with the same growth of plants it would be enriched more
rapidly without pasturing; for animals are not made out of nothing.
Meat, milk, and wool are all highly nitrogenous products.
"On the other hand no amount of pasturing can add to the soil a
single pound of any one of the six mineral elements, and phosphorus,
which is normally the most limited of all these elements, is
abstracted from the soil and retained by the animals in very
considerable amounts. As an average one-fourth of the phosphorus
contained in the food consumed is retained in the animal products,
especially in bone, flesh, and milk."
"Well, I didn't know that milk contained phosphorus," said Mr. West,
"although I did know, of course, that phosphorus must be contained
in bone."
"But, as you know," said Percy, "milk is the only food of young
animals, and they must secure their bone food from the milk.
Furthermore, the complete analysis of milk shows that it contains
very considerable quantities. There are also records of digestion
experiments in which less than one-half of the phosphorus in the
food consumed was recovered in the total manural excrements. As a
matter of fact there is a time in the life of the young mother, as
with the two-year old cow, for example, when she must abstract from
the food she consumes sufficient phosphorus for the nourishment of
three growing animals,--her own immature body, a suckling calf, and
another calf as yet unborn.
"Of course the organic matter of the soil should increase under
pasturing, especially under conditions that make possible an
accumulation of nitrogen; but here too the animals make no
contribution toward any such accumulation. With the same growth of
plants the accumulation of organic matter would be much more rapid
without live stock."
"It is known absolutely but not generally that live stock destroy
about two-thirds of the organic matter contained in the food they
consume. With grains the proportion is higher, and with coarse
forage it is lower, but as an average about two-thirds of the dry
matter in tender young grass or clover or in a mixed, well-balanced
ration of grain and hay is digested and thus practically destroyed
so far as the production of organic matter is concerned.
"This you could easily verify yourself, Mr. West, by feeding two
thousand pounds of any suitable ration, such as corn and clover hay,
collecting and drying the total excrement, which will be found to
weigh about seven hundred pounds, if it contains no higher
percentage of moisture than was contained in the two thousand pounds
of food consumed.
"Of course one should not forget that the liquid excrement contains
more nitrogen and more potassium than the solid, and that much of
this can be saved and returned to the land by use of plenty of
absorbent bedding, and in pasturing there is no danger of any loss
from this source."
"That is one great trouble with us," said Mr. West. "We never have
as much bedding as we could use to advantage, and it is altogether
too expensive to permit us to think of buying straw."
"Probably it would be much less expensive for you to buy ground
limestone and then use good alfalfa hay for bedding," said Percy. "I
mean exactly what I say," he continued. "Of course I do not advise
you to use good alfalfa hay in that way, but it would be a cheap
source of very valuable bedding, and it would make an extremely
valuable manure. However, I should not hesitate to make liberal use
of partially spoiled alfalfa hay for bedding, and you are quite
likely to have more or less such hay; for under favorable
conditions, such as you can easily have with your soil and climate,
alfalfa comes on with a rush in the spring, and often the first crop
should be cut before the weather is suitable for making hay. There
should be very little or no delay at this time, because the first
cutting should be removed in order that it may be out of the way of
the second crop, which comes forward still more rapidly under normal
conditions.
"Some of our Illinois farmers make strenuous objection to taking
care of an alfalfa field that produces $50 worth of the richest and
most valuable hay, because it interferes too much with the proper
care of a $25 corn crop, which they somehow feel requires and
deserves all their time and attention.
"Some of our Virginia farmers have sent to Illinois for their seed
corn," said Mr. West; "and they report very good results as a rule,
especially on land that has been kept up. On our poor land I think
the native corn does better than the Western seed."
"Perhaps that is because it is used to it," suggested Percy, "used
to making the struggle for itself on poor land. Fighting for all it
gets, so to speak. You know the high-bred animals cannot hold their
own with the scrubs when it comes to pawing the snow off the dead
wild grass for a living in the winter, as cattle must do sometimes
on the plains of the Northwest.
"Well, there may be something in that," responded Mr. West, "but the
western seed corn certainly looks fine."
"Yes, that is true," said Percy. "Our farmers have made marked
improvement in seed corn; they also understand very well how to grow
corn. They know how and when to prepare the ground, how and when to
plant; and how and when to cultivate. When Illinois farmers go to
Iowa to buy land, the Iowa real estate men usually take them to see
a farm that is owned and operated by a former Illinoisan, and they
insist that there are no other farmers who know how to raise corn
quite so well as the Illinois farmer. Perhaps the Illinois real
estate man would tell a similar story to the Iowa farmer if he ever
came there to buy land, but 'Westward the Course of Empire takes its
Way' and the man once gone west knows the east no more, except as a
market for his surplus products or a good place in which to spend
his surplus cash.
"But, here. We must finish our study of the data that Miss Adelaide
so kindly helped me to compute."
It was the first time that he had spoken her name in her presence;
and she met his glance as she raised her eyes.
What's in a name? What's in a glance?
Percy proceeded without delay; and Adelaide listened as before, her
drooping lashes protecting her eyes almost entirely from the view of
others. The father and mother heard no name spoken and saw no eyes
meet, and yet as Percy continued speaking a second self seemed to be
thinking different thoughts and he was conscious of a strong desire
to look longer than an instant into those captivating eyes.
A side glance, as she let her lashes droop, revealed to Adelaide
that grandma alone had heard and seen. But Percy was a very
common-place man. Certainly he had no such face as had held her
glance for more than an instant as the afternoon train began to move
from the depot platform. Percy was slightly above the average height
and solidly built, but he was not tall. His face had often been
described as a "perfect blank." No one saw anything of what lay
within by merely looking into his eyes, and yet there was a certain
indescribable something that appealed to one from those eyes. An
elderly German lady once remarked to his mother: "Ihr Sohn hat so
etwas gutes im Auge."
Percy was not polished in manner, Adelaide admitted. Professor
Barstow had said that he deliberated for half an hour as to whether
he should bring his "cawds," for use on Thanksgiving day, because he
feared that the custom in "Vi'ginia" might not be the same as in
"No'th Cahlina"; while she doubted very much if Percy had any cards
whatever. She had never heard it said that he was "strong as an ox
and quick as lightning," but perhaps she knew it as well as his
schoolmates ever had. She had not heard that one of the college
professors, noted for his short-cut expressions, had once told his
class that he wished they would all "keep their thinking apparatus
in as good repair as Johnston's." One thing she did know was that
Percy's voice had been trained to talk to a woman, and that no other
voice had ever spoken her name as he did. Reserve force? depth of
manhood? confidence in his own words? absolute decision? wealth of
tenderness? persistent endurance? unfailing loyalty? boundless
affection? Deep in her heart Adelaide felt that these were among the
attributes revealed in Percy's voice. When he spoke all listened.
His voice was low-pitched but rich in tone and volume and
sincerity,--that was the word.--The whole man seemed to feel and
speak when he spoke. He surely can have no secrets. His mother must
know all that he knows of his own self; but were those letters from
his mother? The handwriting was very modern. Even her father made an
old-fashioned C and W in signing his own name. Had he not looked at
the writing on both those letters before he noticed the others? and
why did he remain so long in his room before coming down to dinner?
Had he not been in college--in a great University where there were
hundreds of the brightest girls of his own State? But why should any
girl be interested in farming? Teaching is such a cultured
profession.
Only a moment--just while he was sorting the papers upon which they
had made the computations, but a hundred thoughts had passed through
her mind. Now he was speaking.
"You remember we took a sample of the subsoil on the sloping land.
This soil is evidently residual, formed in place from the
disintegration of the underlying rock. The soil may represent only a
small part of the original rock, because of the loss by leaching.
Here are the amounts of plant food found in two million pounds of
the subsoil:
590 pounds of nitrogen
1,980 pounds of phosphorus
37,940 pounds of potassium
24,808 pounds of magnesium
31,320 pounds of calcium
"A splendid subsoil," Percy continued. "I know of none better in
Illinois, except that we sometimes have more calcium in the form of
carbonate, and even somewhat more potassium in places; but this must
be a fine subsoil for alfalfa, where the bed rock is not too near
the surface. Of course there is but little nitrogen in the subsoil,
but that is true of all normal soils, because the nitrogen is
contained only in the organic matter, and that decreases rapidly
with depth and usually becomes insufficient to color the soil below
18 inches."
"Now," began Mr. West, "from these different analyses or invoices,
and from your discussion of these results, I take it that you would
not advise me to purchase any commercial fertilizer for use on the
land we are still using in my rotation; but you think we should make
large use of limestone and legume crops."
"Yes, Sir. Phosphorus is markedly deficient only in the very level
upland which has been allowed to remain uncleared for fifty years or
more, and nitrogen is certainly the limiting element on the land you
are trying to keep in your rotation. While you cannot hope to put
into your soil any such reserve of slow-acting organic matter as we
still have in our comparatively new soils of the West, we may keep
in mind that a small amount of quick-acting fresh organic matter is
more effective than a large supply of what we might call embalmed
material that decomposes very, very slowly unless assisted by the
addition of more active organic matter. It frequently happens that
one soil containing a large reserve of old humus, and hence showing
more organic carbon and more nitrogen, by the ultimate invoice, than
another soil, is, nevertheless, less productive, because the other
soil contains a larger amount of fresh organic matter which decays
quickly and thus furnishes more nitrogen and liberates more of the
other elements from the insoluble minerals of the soil because of
the greater abundance of the active products of organic decay.
"I think you should keep in mind, however, that, for every
twenty-five bushels of corn you wish to produce, you should return
to the soil one ton of clover or four tons of average farm manure,
and that for one ton of produce hauled to the barns and fed, you
will probably not return to the land more than one ton of manure."