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262 rapid fermentation under field conditions. Western agriculturalists have not sufficiently appreciated the fact that the most rapid growth of plant food substances in the soil cannot occur at the same time and place with the most rapid crop increase, because both processes draw upon the available soil moisture, soil air and soluble potassium, calcium, phosphorus and nitrogen compounds. Whether this fundamental principle of practical agriculture is written in their literature or not it is most indelibly fixed in their practice. If we and they can perpetuate the essentials of this practice at a large saving of human effort, or perpetually secure the final result in some more expeditious and less laborious way, most important progress will have been made.

Fig 140.— Looking across reservoir and four-man foot-power pump, used to lift water to a nursery rice bed, at fields of grain sowed broadcast in narrow beds.

When we went north to the Shantung province the Kiangsu and Chekiang fanners were engaged in another of their time saving practices, also involving a large amount of human labor. This was the planting of cotton in wheat fields before the wheat was quite ready to