many pounds of that most costly of all plant foods, nitrogen. The 

 roots of the cowpea enter deeply into the soil, opening and loosening 

 it far down for the benefit of the roots of the succeeding crops of corn, 

 cotton, and tobacco. It has been found by experiment that the fer- 

 tilizing value of the roots and stubble of the cowpea are very con- 

 siderable, but not as great as that of the hay removed from the field. 

 The best and most economical use of this forage crop is, then, to cut 

 for hay, feed to stock, and return the stable manure to the soil. 

 Plowing the whole crop under is less remunerative because there is 

 much needless waste of the muscle-making and fat-forming con- 

 stituents of the plant which would bring more profit if turned into 

 beef, pork, wool, cheese, or butter. 



As regards the disposal of the crop, there is a wide variation in 

 practice. The feeding value of vines and peas much exceeds their 

 fertilizing value. But as between the practice of turning the vines 

 under green in autumn and that of allowing them to lie on the 

 ground during the winter, the latter is undoubtedly sometimes to be 

 preferred, though theoretically wrong. Theoretically, to plow the 

 vines under in autumn will be to save all the available nitrogen and 

 convert the whole plant into himius. Practically, the turning under 

 of so large an amount of watery green herbage is highly injurious, 

 causing a too rapid decay and consequent "burning" or souring of 

 the soil. The upper soil layers, freshly stirred and mellowed in 

 autumn, lose more by leaching and washing than they do in an 

 unplowed field covered by its winter mulch of decaying herbage, 

 though in both cases there is a decided loss of fertility over what 

 would result by following the peas with a crop of rye, winter 

 wheat, the turf -forming winter oats, winter vetch, or crimson clover. 

 The yields of forage are better on rich soils than on poor ones, but 

 the beneficial effects upon the succeeding crop due to the growth of 

 cowpeas are not so marked in the former case as in the latter. 



COWPEAS FOR SWINE AND CATTLE. 



When cowpeas are planted for green manure, it is an excellent prac- 

 tice to turn hogs into the field about the time that the first peas are 

 ripening. Young pigs thrive amazingly on the succulent foliage and 

 well-filled pods, and the quality of the pork raised on such a healthful 

 and nutritious diet is very fine. This is a very profitable method of 

 fattening hogs or of preparing them for topping off with corn or 

 sorghum for market. An acre of ripening cowpeas will pasture from 

 fifteen to twenty hogs for several weeks, and the gain in fertility 

 from the droppings of the animals during that period will more than 

 counterbalance the fertilizing value of the forage eaten. The rapid 



