276 ANNUAL. REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



improver in tlie very section where it reaches its greatest value. 

 I at ouce determined to Avage a light for the cow pea iu the South. 

 What 1 said and wrote on tlie subject attracted great attention 

 also in the north, and farmers began to experiment with the cow 

 l)ea far north of where 1 ever thought it could possibly succeed. 

 What i was endeavoring to do was not so much to extend the cul- 

 ture of the pea northward as to get the southern farmers to realize 

 its value and to understand what could be done through its aid 

 in the improvement and restoration of their worn lands, and thus 

 to get them into a more systematic method of farming for cotton 

 or tobacco. But here and there, all over the north, men claimed 

 to be succeeding with the pea and considering it of great value 

 to them. In Southern Illinois, where clover has gotten to be very 

 uncertain, the cow pea is now a staple forage crop with the farm- 

 ers. Two years ago a farmer up in Wisconsin wrote to me that he 

 had ripened 100 bushels of the peas and last spring he wrote that 

 he had made contracts with seedsmen to grow 1,650 bushels the past 

 summer, as they assumed that peas grown that far north would be 

 better for northern conditions. A dairyman in Southern Vermont 

 wi'ote that he had found the pea indispensable, and that with it he 

 was able to do without buying bran. And yet, in the high mountain 

 plateaus of North Carolina west of the Blue Ridge, where the farms 

 lie 3,000 to 4,000 feet above the sea, the cow pea does not thrive 

 1o any profitable extent. The nights are too cool and the soil too 

 heavy for the peas. It is noticeable, so far as I have been able to 

 observe, that in any place north of the fortieth parallel if the 

 pea is a success it is on a warm, sandy soil and at a slight elevation 

 above the sea level. Under other conditions it may make a fair 

 growth in the warmest part of the season, and may pay as a summer 

 })asture when grass is dry, but as a forage and hay crop I hardl}, 

 think it can be a success north of that line on a heavy, clay soil 

 and in a mountain section where the summer nights are cool. 

 When I first began to advocate the use of the cow pea, the editor 

 of a paper published in the Cumberland Valley tried to ridicule 

 what I had written, and said that the cow i)ea had been tried in 

 Southern renns3lvania and had proved a failure. Now, where that 

 editor lived there has been great success with this pea. A few 

 years ago, when I was temporarily visiting a town in Eastern North 

 Carolina tlie first of July, t found a. farmer gathering ripe peas and 

 preparing to plant a second croj) from the seed. I begged him to 

 plant all that he could, for I felt sure that a pea that would ripen 

 in sixty days from the ])]anting of the seed was the pea that I 

 had been looking for for northern planting. He did as I asked, 

 and I got a Philadelphia seedsman to introduce the pea under the 

 name of ^^';ll•ren's Extra Early, and it is this pea that is being 



