As for me, I purpose making no experiments, whatever.  I do not see how I or any other farmer can afford to put our limited funds into experiments, especially when we often lack the facilities for taking the exact and complete data that are needed.  It takes time and labor and some equipment to make accurate measurements, to weigh every pound of fertilizer applied and every crop carefully harvested from measured and carefully seeded areas, especially selected because of their uniform and representative character.  I think this is public business and it is best done by the State for the benefit of all.

I have heard narrow politicians call it class legislation to appropriate funds for such agricultural investigations, but the fact is that to investigate the soil and to insure an abundant use of limestone, phosphate, or other necessary materials required for the improvement and permanent maintenance of the fertility of the soil is legislation for all the people, both now and hereafter.  Would that our Statesmen would think as much of maintaining this most important national resource, as they do of maintaining our national honor by means of battleships and an army and navy supported at an expense of three hundred million dollars a year, sufficient to furnish ten tons of limestone to every acre of Virginia land, an amount twenty times the Nation’s appropriation for agriculture; and even this is largely used in getting new lands ready for the bleeding process, instead of reviving those that have been practically bled to death.

As for me, I shall simply take the results which prove profitable on the accurately conducted experiment fields of the University of Illinois, one of which is located only seven miles from Poorland Farm, and on the same type of soil, I shall try to profit by that positive information, and await the accumulation of conclusive data relating to tile-drainage and other possible improvements of uncertain practicability for “Egypt.”

Say, but our soil is acid!  The University soil survey men say that the acidity is positive in the surface, comparative in the subsurface, and superlative in the subsoil.  Two of them insisted that the subsoil has an acid taste.  The analysis of a set of soil samples collected near Heart-of-Egypt shows that to neutralize the acidity of the surface soil will require seven hundred and eighty pounds of limestone per acre, while three tons are required for the first twenty inches, and sixteen tons for the next twenty inches.  The tight clay stratum reaches from about twenty to thirty-six inches.  Above this is a flour-like gray layer varying in thickness from an inch to ten inches, but below the tight clay the subsoil seems to be more porous, and I am hoping that we may lay tile just below the tight clay and then puncture that clay stratum with red clover roots and thus improve the physical condition of the soil.  I asked Mr. Secor, a friend who operates a coal mine,—­and farms for recreation,—­if he thought alfalfa could be raised on this type of soil.  He replied:  “That depends on what kind of a gimlet it has on its tap root.”