coville: formation of leafmold 89 



in which all the crops are acid- tolerant. We may yet, perhaps, 

 utilize for agricultural purposes even the sandy acid lands of 

 the coastal plain instead of turning them over as we now do to 

 the lank huckleberry picker, whose lonesome garden is all that 

 he is able to reclaim by present methods from the imaginary 

 wilderness that surrounds him. Yet these lands contain all sorts 

 of delicious native fruits, and a natural vegetation rich and lux- 

 uriant after its own manner. 



Had our agriculture originated not in the alkaline soils of the 

 Orient but among the aboriginal peoples of the bogs of Scotland 

 or of the sandy pine barrens of our Atlantic Coastal Plain we 

 should have entirely different ideas of soil fertility from those 

 we now possess. If our cultivated fruits were large and otherwise 

 improved forms of the blueberry, the service berry, the thorn- 

 apple, and the beach plum, if our only grains were rye and buck- 

 wheat and our only hay redtop and vetch, and if our root crops 

 consisted of potatoes, carrots, and onions, our high-priced agri- 

 cultural lands would be the light sandy acid soils and the drained 

 bogs, while our deep limestone soils would be condemned to use 

 for the pasturage of cattle and of sheep. 



Thus far man has devoted himself largely to the utilization 

 of the plants of the leafmold, which have gathered up for him the 

 wealth of the earth. Let him now, I say, turn his attention also 

 to the plants of the peat and try whether they will not yield to 

 him in increased measure the luxuriance of foliage and of fruit 

 that they have always yielded without assistance to nature 

 herself. 



