_Experiment No. 2._--The importance of good texture may be well shown in the class room. Pots should be filled with a soil which is lumpy and cloddy, and other pots with the same kind of material after it has been made fine and mellow. After seeds are planted in the different pots, a careful study should be made of the length of time required for germination and of the health and vigor of the plants. _Experiment No. 3._--The greater part of our farming lands do not present ideal conditions as regards texture. Clay soils are especially likely to be in bad condition. If samples of the various soils can be collected, as sand, loam, clay, etc., it may be clearly shown how different soils respond to the same kind of treatment. With a common garden trowel, the soils should be stirred and worked while wet, and then put away to dry. After drying, the conditions presented by the soils should be noted, also the length of time required for the soils to become dry. Whereas the sand and the loam will remain in fairly good condition when dry, the clay will have become "puddled," _i. e._, the particles will have run together and made a hard, compact mass. Thus it is found in practice that clay soils must be handled with far more care and intelligence than is required for the sand and loams, if the texture is to be kept perfect. _Experiment No. 4._--If, in the experiment above suggested, the clay soil is mixed with leaf-mould, or humus soil, from the woods, it will be found to act very differently. The vegetable matter thus mixed with the mineral matter prevents the running together of the particles of clay. Two principles, both important as relating to soil texture, now have been illustrated. Soils must not be worked when they are so wet that their particles will cohere, and organic matter, or humus, must be kept mixed with the mineral matter of the soil. In practical farm operations, if the soil can be made into a mud ball it is said to be too wet to work. The required amount of humus is retained in the soil by occasionally plowing under some green crop, as clover, or by applying barn manures. [Illustration: _Fig. 35. The glass of water at the right has received lime and the clay has been flocculated; the other was not treated._] Clay soils are also frequently treated with lime to cause them to remain in good condition and be more easily tilled. Lime causes the fine particles to flocculate, or to become granular, _i. e._, several particles unite to form a larger particle, and these combinations are more stable and do not so readily puddle, or run together. A mud-puddle in clay soil will remain murky until the water has evaporated entirely. Let a little water-slaked lime be mixed with the muddy water, and the particles of clay will be flocculated and will settle to the bottom; thus the water will become clear.