FORMATION OF LEAFMOLD — COVlLLE. 343 



East. Although some of our agricultural plants are tolerant of 

 acidity, oiil' agriculturalists have not yet recognized the possibility 

 of building up for acid soils a special agriculture in which all the 

 crops are acid-tolerant. We may yet, perhaps, utilize for agricul- 

 tural purposes even the sandy acid lands of the coastal plain instead 

 of turning them over as we now do to the lank huckleberry picker, 

 whose lonesome garden is all that he is able to reclami by present 

 methods from the imaginary wilderness that surrounds him. Yet 

 these lands contain all sorts of delicious native fruits, and a natural 

 vegetation rich and luxuriant after its own manner. 



Had our agriculture originated not in the alkaline soils of the 

 Orient, but among the aboriginal peoples of the bogs of Scotland, or 

 of the sandy pine barrens of our Atlantic Coastal Plain, we should 

 have entirely different ideas of soil fertility from those we now pos- 

 sess. If our cultivated fruits were large and otherwise improved 

 forms of the blueberry, the service berry {Amelanchie7') ^ the thorn- 

 apple {Crataegus)^ and the beach plum {Primus maritima), if our 

 only grains were rye and buckwheat, and our only hay redtop and 

 vetch, and if our root crops consisted of potatoes and carrots only, 

 our high-priced agricultural lands would be the light sandy acid soils 

 and the drained bogs, while our deep limestone soils would be con- 

 demned to use for the pasturage of cattle and of sheep. 



Thus far man has devoted himself largely to the utilization of the 

 plants of the leafmold, which have gathered up for him the wealth 

 of the earth. Let him now, I say, turn his attention also to the plants 

 of the peat and try whether they will not yield to him in increased 

 measure the luxuriance of foliage and of fruit that they have always 

 yielded without assistance to nature herself. 



