Word: virginals
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...soil scientists say that it simply is not true that land is static. Virgin soils vary widely in fertility and character, but once under cultivation they are subject to the will of modern...
Plant-Formed Soil. The prize virgin soils of temperate regions are the chernozems.* They develop in dryish regions like Iowa and the Ukraine, where the climate naturally favors the growth of tall grasses. The grasses deposit a great deal of organic material in the soil, forming a dark brown, almost black layer a foot or more deep. This (and the slight rainfall) keeps soluble nutrients from leaching away...
Another thing they laugh at is the familiar phrase, "irreplaceable topsoil." Topsoil should certainly be cherished and protected, the soil men say, but it is not irreplaceable. In 1937, a U.S. Government experiment station skinned ten inches of soil off half an acre of virgin Ohio grassland, leaving nothing but the yellow subsoil. Corn planted on an untreated strip of this poor stuff produced no crop at all. But other strips were nursed along with fertilizer and crop rotations. During the sixth season, the best strip of man-made topsoil produced 86 bushels of corn an acre, more than twice...
...amusing parody of them. The story concerns an extraordinary occurrence in the town of Castel Rodriguez: a girl named Catalina Perez, comely, virtuous and 16 years old, who has been trampled by a bull and crippled so that she can walk only with a crutch, reports that the Virgin Mary appeared to her and told her that to be healed she must go to "the son of Juan Suarez de Valero who has best served...
Gentle Unicorn. The unicorn, King of (nonexistent) Beasts, was reputed to be a graceful, strong animal that could not be taken by force. But like the "gentil knights" of the troubadours' verses, it would lay its head in a virgin's lap. A pity, says Ley, to believe that the unicorn is only an ugly rhinoceros, dimly and distantly seen. Perhaps the noble beast had a pleasanter prototype. Modern scientists know, Ley points out, that the horn buds of a calf can be transplanted to the middle of its forehead, where they develop together into a "unicorn" (single...