The Bulletin. 51 



But let me say right here that in my opinion practically all of our lands 

 need cover crops on them during the winter. I may be a crank on this sub- 

 ject; but, frankly, I believe it possible to permanently and economically build 

 up most Southern soils while they are left bare during the winter. The wash- 

 ing and leaching of the winter rains injure our lands more than the summer 

 cropping ; and with all the cover crops we have, and our chronic need of feed 

 for our stock, and humus for our land, is it not folly to leave the lands ex- 

 posed to all the rains of our rainy winters? We must also keep more stock 

 and quit exporting so much of our cotton-seed meal. But all these problems 

 each man must work out for himself on his own farm. I am only trying to 

 call attention to the problem— the greatest problem the Southern farmer has 

 t solve— the getting rid of the unprofitable acres, or rather the changing of 

 them into profitable acres. We cannot afford, my friends, to go on working 

 lands that do not pay wages for the time we spend on them; we certainly 

 cannot afford to go on increasing the area of such lands. We must learn that 

 the soil is not a dead mass of matter with which we can do as we please, but 

 tbat it is the source of our very life, to be cared for and enriched and loved. 

 When we learn this, and have changed our old methods of soil-robbery and 

 soil-mutilation for tbe watchful care and the tender protection the good hus- 

 bandman has always given the acres he has tended, the soil will do its part. 

 We have unprofitable acres because we have been unthinking and unscrupu- 

 lous in our dealings with the land. Robbing it, we have robbed ourselves. 



When you, the farmers of North Carolina, treat your land with the respect 

 due to the handiwork of God, you will quit making average yields of 200 

 pounds of cotton and less than 15 bushels of corn to the acre; and you will 

 free your State from the blight of unproductive labor, which is, in its turn, 

 largely responsible for the poverty, tbe illiteracy and the inefficiency of which 

 we are all so ashamed whenever we see the census reports. 



We should all be glad to be permitted to share in such a work, each man 

 individually on his own land, and all of us together, in one great educational 

 movement that will make plain to every farmer the folly and the wrong of 

 continued soil depletion ! 



THE CRIME OF GULLYING. 



By C. L. NEWMAN, North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. 



The earth's surface is the abode of man and of all other animate creations. 

 It is the alpha and omega of life. All of man's activities are confined to tbe 

 common meeting-ground of earth and air. The earth's surface is the Garden 

 of Eden, and man, by divine command, is its keeper. What record have we of 

 his stewardship? The destruction of a once magnificent forest and the chisel- 

 ing of gullies as monuments to its memory! "The firm and everlasting hills 

 we must regard as neitber firm nor everlasting. Whole mountain chains of a 

 geological yesterday have disappeared from view, and, as with the ancient 

 cities of the East, we read their histories only in their ruins. Yet, in all this 

 seemingly destructive force of breaking down, decomposition, and erosion, 

 there is 'traceable the one underlying principle of transformation from the 

 unstable to that which to-day is more stable." Viewed in the light of planet 

 building or of planet transformation, notbing is lost and nothing stable. 

 Change is tbe organic law of Nature, and Nature, in an ever fitful unrest, 

 ceaselessly labors at tearing down her own handiwork. Sbe may rear a 

 forest of fungi in a night or a forest of oaks in a hundred centuries ; she may 

 cast a mountain system in a day and dally a thousand centuries in the sculp- 

 turing of a hillock. . 



A lack of foresight and a disregard for coming generations is manifest 

 wherever cotton and tobacco reign, and every muddy stream bears down- 



