46 The Bulletin. 



In Illinois there is the Domestic Science Association, with the women meet- 

 ing out in every farming district. 



The University of Wisconsin has a short course for women, called the House- 

 keepers' Conference. 



Cornell University, in New York State, has added a feature, The Farmers' 

 Wives' Reading Course, to reach the woman who cannot come to college. 



How is the comparison, sisters? 



The study of domestic science is transforming the social conditions for the 

 farm mother. It is reducing the weary routine of housework to direct 

 methods. It is lifting the woman's vision from the drudgery of the kitchen 

 to the beauty of the meadow and the orchard in their springtime bloom. Does 

 the driven farm mother think she has no time for all this? Perhaps she 

 hasn't now, but method shortens labor. 



In some States the traveling library is in operation. The free traveling 

 library movement originated in the State of New York in 1892. The State 

 Librarian of Albany started the plan and sent the books traveling. Now any 

 household can get a box of books on application at Albany. Out from Hagers- 

 town. Md., a covered wagon starts once a week. It is the traveling library as 

 Maryland has adopted it, with the wagon interior filled with book shelves 

 and the librarian en route. 



In just seven years. (1892, when the traveling library plan originated, till 

 1899) thirty-two States had adopted the commission. Sisters of the farm, is 

 it not time for us to try some measure by which we can bring about some of 

 the advantages the other States are now enjoying? 



We have a network of telephone systems bringing the farm mother into 

 closer contact with the city and town and neighbors. We have the still 

 greater advantage, the rural free delivery mail system that brings us the 

 daily paper telling us what has happened around the world in the last twenty- 

 four hours. We have a climate and rainfall that give us advantages beyond 

 many other States. 



Farm mothers, let us awaken from this Rip Van Winkle sleep and help to 

 bring about advantages existing in our sister States and make this, the Old 

 North State, the Great Old North State. 



RELATION OF SOIL TYPES TO CROP VARIETIES. 



By J. L. BURGESS, Agronomist, N. C. Department of Agriculture. 



Every farmer knows that all of his acres are not alike. Some are poorer 

 than others from lack of one or more of the elements of plant food. Some 

 fail to respond favorably from a surplus of moisture or some other abnormal 

 condition. In one way and another nature, to say nothing of the ruthless 

 hand of the husbandman, has developed in our fields and forests various and 

 varying soil conditions that are easily read in the character of the vegetation 

 produced. 



One has only to observe a little and he will find that a number of the lead- 

 ing soil types or "kinds of land" in his locality bear a vegetation all but 

 peculiar to themselves. Should the vegetation be composed largely of red 

 cedar, hack-berry, elm, hickory, and black walnut, an examination will gen- 

 erally show the presence of a calcareous or limy soil, derived, perhaps, from a 

 rotten limestone or a highly calcareous igneous rock. Other illustrative ex- 

 amples might be cited among vegetation growing in the wild, but we are more 

 interested in domesticated plants. 



Among these, expensive experience has taught farmers all over the country 

 that certain crops were nearly always grown at a loss on certain lands, re- 

 gardless of the care and attention given them. In the black belt of Alabama 

 and Mississippi the farmers have not ceased for years to grow cotton. Some 



