"Keeping Up the Soil," in "The Country Life Reader," deals with the subject of the use of fertilizers on the farm--how easy it is to waste them, how easy it is to save them, and how important it is that they should be saved; while the article on "Acid Soils" tells how the lime in the bones of the monsters has helped keep the soil from getting "sour stomach," and also how they unlocked the potash and phosphorus in the soil so that the plants could get at them. [Illustration: FERTILE FIELDS THAT RODE ON THE WIND The winds that now help grow the corn and wheat on these broad fields by carrying the pollen from one plant to another, also brought the soil on which they grew. These are the loess plains of Nebraska. There are 42,000 acres of them.] CHAPTER III (MARCH) ... the busy winds That kept no intervals of rest. --_Wordsworth._ Except wind stands as never it stood 'Tis an ill wind turns none to good. --_Tusser._ THE WINDS AND THE WORLD'S WORK That saying "idle as the winds" must have started in the days when they didn't know; for if ever there was a busy people, it's the Winds. Not only do they help plant the trees of the forest, sow the fields with grass and flowers, and water them with rain, but they make and carry soil all over the world. And, like everything else in Nature, they have a sense of beauty and the picturesque. Rock, for example, weathered away into dust by the help of the winds, as it is, takes on all sorts of picturesque shapes. And, of course, the winds love music; everybody knows that. Before we get through with this chapter we're going to end a happy day outdoors with a grand musical festival in the forest, with light refreshments--spice-laden winds from the sea. There'll be nobody there but the trees and the winds and John Muir and us; all nice people. I. SUCH CLOUDS OF DUST! March leads the procession of the dusty months because the warming up of the land, as the sun advances from the south, brings the colder and heavier winds down from the north. These winds seem to have a wrestling match with the southern winds and with each other, and among them they kick up a tremendous dust, because there's so much of it lying around loose; for the snows have gone, and the rainy season hasn't begun, and the fields are bare. ABOUT THE DUST WE GET IN OUR EYES Most people think these March winds a great nuisance because some of us dust grains are apt to get into their eyes; but dust in the eye is only the right thing in the wrong place. Just think of the amount of dust going about in March that _doesn't_ get into your eye; and how nice and fine it is, and how mixed with all the magic stuff of different kinds of soil, thus brought together from everywhere.