isa-normaladvance-1914-00033

Description:	THEIndianastate normalLibraryNORMAL ADVANCE33is its blood. However, not all of the water in the ground belongs to this circulatory system. About each particle of soil a thin film of water adheres by the force of adhesion. These films, enriched by mineral and atmospheric matter in solution, are the blood of the soil. They are constantly being absorbed by rootlets and be¬ ing replenished by circulation of soil water. If, for example, the ground-water level should sink twenty-five feet below the surface of the earth, capillary attraction (the process which makes water spread in a lump of sugar, or ink in a blotter) would cause some of the moisture to rise and reenforce the withering films. It is by this means that crops continue growing during summer droughts.If the particles of the soil are too course, as in pure sand, the water drains away rapidly, and the shrinking films cannot be augmented. The farmer grumbles that this type of land is not good because it is too hot, and burns. If the particles are too small and flat, as in some clays, the ground becomes wet and has a tendency to sour, since too much water is re¬ tained. To the ploughman this earth is heavy and cold. These are the sullen lands which refuse to respond to the spring sunshine. They are the nooks which harbor the last rem¬ nants of melting snow. They do not respond to cultivation, and are rightly termed dead land. A happy medium of comminution gives a warm, light loam. Such a soil produces early crops. It is this type which, stirring under the mild sunbeams, sent its tender plant charges peeping up into the bright world, and thereby called forth Lowells Day in June.To supply the films of water with ever fresh air, the soil must breathe. The processes by which this breathing is carried on chiefly are four. A local, heavy rain may fill the soil with water and drive out the air. As the ground water level falls subsequently, fresh air comes into the interstices. Diffusion of gases, such as takes place in our lungs, is another factor. Also, heat expands the atmosphere in the earth and drives part of it out of the ground. Upon subsequent cooling the air inthe interstices contracts and makes room for fresh atmosphere from above. Finally, changes in pressure of the air above the earth cause the same phenomenon. A wTestern farmer once ac- cidently dropped his hat into a crevice in the ground from which the air happened to be rising. To his surprise his hat was carried up¬ ward and fell safely to the ground several rods away. The next day he brought his friends and boldly dropped his hat again into the crevice. But this time the pressure within the cavity was less than that without and the re¬ sulting downward current of air carried his property into the bowels of the earth.Chemical reactions, working with these four features of the soil world, namely, composi¬ tion, division, hydration and aeration, make of it a great laboratory, where the mineral food of plants has been prepared since before the days of Adam. Whole families, colonies, and nations of plants have come and gone. The soil kindly nourished them all in their turn and saw them depart. Compared to this crum¬ bling bit of antiquity the age of the great coal producing plants (i. e., the carboniferous, or coal period in the geological history of the earth) was but a fortnight of summer evenings, and the time during which the verdue of the tropics once haltingly crept to the extreme limits of Alaska and filled the arctic seas with warmth-loving life, and only slowly to vacil¬ late equatorward before the ice fields from the north, seems like a fleeing season. (It is held that during the Ordovician period of geo¬ logical time tropical corals lived in the waters off of the Arctic islands of Europe. During the Cretaceous period the flora of Greenland was like that of our country.) Though ever changing the soil has endured. If it had a soul we might say that its many years are a benign recognition of its great service, for it has lived but to give. If sacrifice be the spirit of a world, here is one world. Perhaps it was eminently fitting when Dr. T. C. Chamberlain, the greatest living philosophic geoligist, re¬ cently hinted (in the Journal of Geology) that in this warm, pulsing, vaprous, breathing soil
Source:	http://indstate.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/isuarchive/id/32473
Collection:	Indiana State University Archives

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