Bristol News

Mixing Soils. - There often exist on the same farm, materials entirely separate from each other, which, if mixed together, would add greatly to the fertility of the land. A neighboring farmer had seven or eight acres excellent black muck or peat, averaging seven feet deep, which might have been underdrained at a moderate expense and rendered a fertile field, but which the owner suffered to lie idle and useless year after year. Much of his adjacent farm consisted of dry ridges and knolls, out of which the vegetable matter had entirely disappeared, which might have been benefited by this muck. The work could have been done in Winter at little expense - but there, for half a lifetime, lay the great muck bed under water, and the dry ridges parching in the summer's sun. All that was needed was mixing the different material of the farm. Subsoils are frequently quite different in character from the worked soil above. We once saw a striking illustration of this difference. An open ditch, some two feet deep and many rods in length, had been dug to drain a small pond. The earth taken from this ditch was thrown by the shovel and scattered back a rod or more on each side over the surface of the field, which was afterwards sown with wheat. The succeeding summer was unfavorable to this crop; and while the rest did not average a product of more than five bushels per acre, the portion which had been dressed with subsoil, yielded by estimate, at the rate of twenty bushels. - Experimental Farm Journal.