study have been given to it bj' botanists and the experimental agri- 

 cultui-ists. No valid conclusions can be drawn from the brief study 

 of a subject so complex. Cowpeas pass through every gradation of 

 form, from a short, stocky, upright bush having single stems a foot 

 high with very short lateral branches to those w^th trailing runners 

 growing as flat upon the ground as sweet-potato and melon vines, the 

 prostrate stems 15 or 20 feet in length. The pods vary from 4 to 16 

 inches in length, and the peas are of everj^ imaginable shade through 

 white, yellow, green, pink, gray, brown, red, purple, and black, of 

 solid colors or variously mottled and speckled, and of varying sizes 

 and forms from large kidney-shaped to little round ones smaller than 

 the garden pea. There is a like variation in the length of time the 

 different forms require to ripen seed, some requiring eight or nine 

 months, a few ripening ill sixty days from the time of i)lanting. 



There seems to be a somewhat constant relation between the time 

 required for attaining maturitj'^ and the habit of growtli. The bush 

 varieties ripen in a shorter season than the trailers, but a bush vari- 

 ety taken from the North will, in the course of a few seasons, assume 

 the trailing habit and lengthen out its period of growtli in any of the 

 Southern States. Also, a runner or creeper requiring six to eight 

 months for reaching maturity in Louisiana will, if planted each year 

 a hundred miles farther north, gradually accommodate itself to the 

 shorter season and at the ^ame time shorten its runners, approaching 

 more and more to the upright or "bush " habit of growth. There can 

 be no hard and fast line of separation between bush j)eas, trailers, 

 and runners. The best varietal character is probably the color of 

 the seed. It is quite probable that more than one species is in culti- 

 vation. The ' ' red " and ' ' black " varieties are closely allied ; the round 

 "lady" peas form a separate group; the large " black-ej^ed " and 

 "purple-eyed" are typical of another, and the variously mottled and 

 speckled "whip-poor-wills" are only a degree removed from the solid- 

 colored yellow, pink, and light-brown ones, and together would nat- 

 urally be taken to constitute one species or variety. The black peas 

 jjass through various shades of red before maturity. The red varieties 

 sometimes carry their change of color in ripening so far that they can 

 not be distinguished from the black. The ' ' black-eyed " and ' ' i)urple- 

 eyed " are of the same ground color, differing only in the color of the 

 ring surrounding the eye. The various " crowders," yellow and white, 

 the whip-poor-will, clay, and "yellow-eyed" forms have numerous 

 crosses and so-called hybrids in which the fundamental yellows and 

 browns form varying mixtures. 



, COWPEAS AND SOIL RENOVATION. 



A field of cowpeas has been very happilj" designated ' ' the poor man's 

 bank," for in common with all its leguminous congeners, the field 

 pea, clovers, alfalfa, and a score of others, this crop has the power of 



