gardener, who thus expends a little thought and farsighted labor will
at last secure results that will surpass his most sanguine hopes, and
that, too, from land that would otherwise be as hard as Pharaoh's
heart.

Before passing from this soil to that of an opposite character, let me
add a few words of caution. Clay land should never be stirred when
either very wet or very dry, or else a lumpy condition results that
injures it for years. It should be plowed or dug only when it
crumbles. When the soil is sticky, or turns up in great hard lumps,
let it alone. The more haste the worst speed.

Again, the practice of fall plowing, so very beneficial in latitudes
where frosts are severe and long continued, is just the reverse in the
far South. There our snow is rain, and the upturned furrows are washed
down into a smooth, sticky mass by the winter storms. On steep
hillsides, much of the soil would ooze away with every rain, or slide
downhill en masse. In the South, therefore, unless a clay soil is to
be planted at once, it must not be disturbed in the fall, and it is
well if it can be protected by stubble or litter, which shields it
from the direct contact of the rain and from the sun's rays. But cow-
peas, or any other rank-growing green crop adapted to the locality, is
as useful to Southern clay as to Northern, and Southern fields might
be enriched rapidly, since their long season permits of plowing under
several growths.

Lime and potash in their various forms, in connection with green
crops, would give permanent fertility to every heavy acre of Southern
land. In my judgment, however, barnyard manure is not surpassed in
value by any other in any latitude. If one owned clay land from which