204 TWENTY-FIRST REPORT. 



Perhaps it also explains a certain marked reticence on the part of public 

 officers where cut-over lands are concerned, and the studied avoidance by 

 Federal and State agricultural institutions of topics seemingly within their 

 legitimate purview, as for instance, deserted farms and abandoned farmers. 

 One will search almost in vain for specific and candid statements upon such 

 subjects. The hyperbole of the boomer is very commonly preferred to the 

 sober style of the scientist. 



The general code which tends to suppress the "knocker," the wholly 

 understandable local sentiment resulting in political pressure, the power which 

 exploiting "capital" normally has in a new region, account largely for the 

 r.eculiar subreption which so often obtains in connection with "agricultural 

 development." But there is another phase of the matter. 



As the engineer hesitates to admit that he cannot harness any rapids, or, 

 as the surgeon refuses to admit any limits to which his skill may not some 

 time go, so the agronomist will not permit himself to be restrained. To the 

 agronomist and the soil surveyor, land not imder intensive cultivation is but 

 a challenge. This is right and proper, and the justification for such a point 

 of view can be amply supported. But the engineer will often say to his prin- 

 cipal, "I can build you a dam that will hold — but it will cost you more than 

 it is worth." Or, "There is a lot of ore in that hill, but it's of too low grade 

 to handle at a profit." Under such circumstances, what does the agricultural 

 expert say? 



"We are close upon the limit of our resources and are asking where we 

 shall find more land with which to supply our ever gi-owing needs. * * * 

 The dry-farmer * * * has reformed his tillage methods * * * j,jj(| 

 has chosen a * * * get of plants to help him * * * durum wheat, 

 milo, kafir, kaoliang, * * * alfalfa." In the drained swamp areas we 

 have "Kalamazoo celery, Wisconsin ci'anberries, the onions from Iowa muck 

 lands * * * rice and dasheen. * * "We know that the hills of New 

 England were pressed into flat-land uses by reason of certain peculiar circum- 

 stances and with the most melancholy results * * * jn the Ozarks one 

 may still * * * see a native farmer or his wife following a 'little ole 

 rabbit mule' and an eight-inch plow iip and down over stony hillsides which 

 it was a crime even to have cleaved * * * But those very hills are * * * 

 suited to raising the finest of peaches and apples and strawberries * * * 

 and man can fit upon the resources of this region a splendid type of divei'sified 

 farming * * * And so on indefinitely." • 



Michigan cut-over lands comprise "areas of two distinct types : Those on 

 which hardwoods grew and those producing pines and other conifers. Stump 

 lands, upon which hardwood grew, if promptly rough -burned and seeded to 

 a mixture of grasses and legumes and then pastured for a few years until the 



•Nourse, Scientific Monthly, Feb. 1918, p. 116. 



