480 BOTANICAL SURVEY OF DISMAL SWAMP REGION. 



poison dogwood or boar wood (Bhus remix), cotton wood (PoptUus 

 heierophyUa), laurel-leaved greenbrier (Smilax laurifolia), sweet bay 

 {Magnolia virginiaita), etc., whose presence betrays at once that the 

 soil is too rich in organic matter to be at all suited to "trucking" as 

 the industry is at present practiced. 



While the trees and shrubs enumerated in the preceding paragraph 

 show that the soil on which they grow is not adapted to forcing gar- 

 den vegetables to early maturity, with the exception of juniper they 

 by no means indicate a worthless soil. The heavier clayey, but not 

 swampy, lands, which are mostly found at some distance from tide 

 water, can be made to yield excellent crops of oats, clover, timothy, 

 cowpeas, and other forage plants. It is to be strongly recommended 

 that more attention be paid in the Dismal Swamp region to growing 

 forage crops and raising cattle. Truck farming, although yielding 

 large returns to a few successful growers, is already overcrowded, and 

 is becoming more so every year. It is no uncommon thing in the 

 extensive trucking areas along the coast for a large part of the berry 

 crop to be left on the vines; and much of the potato crop remains in 

 the ground because overproduction has brought the market price 

 down to a figure where it no longer pays to gather the crop. Mean- 

 while a large part of the beef and even the dairy products consumed 

 in the region are imported from the North and West. 



While some lands are fairly well adapted to wheat, cotton, and 

 tobacco, it is much to Ik; doubted whether this region can success- 

 fully compete with others in the production of any of these crops. 

 Much of the heavy interior soils are now in corn, and in the lower 

 part of Norfolk and Princess Anne counties, Va., a noteworthy amount 

 of cotton is raised. As a rule neither crop gives good results, chiefly 

 because the land has been worn out by long cultivation in one or the 

 other crop, without tin 1 practice of intelligent rotation. Greater atten- 

 tion to clover and meadow grasses, as well as more diligent cultiva- 

 tion, would go far to restore 1 hem. There are some farms in that part 

 of the region which afford admirable object lessons of what can be 

 accomplished by this treatment, lint as a rule tin 1 interior lands are 

 in sorry contrast to the highly cultivated truck farms that border tide 

 water. 



A final word should be said concerning the swamp lands, which are 

 more fully discussed in the chapter on "Soils." These are of two 

 types — the peaty juniper soil and the rich black-gum land. The first 

 type, which does not occur in any noteworthy area outside the main 

 borders of the Dismal Swamp, is characterized by a native growth of 

 "juniper" or white cedar (Chamaecyparis). According to all testi- 

 mony, it is agriculturally valueless. " Black-gum land" is so called 

 from the principal tree which it bears when in its virgin state, the 

 black gum (Nyssa biflora). Most of it is covered with a heavy forest 

 composed of this tree, red maple (Acer nibrum), some (formerly 



