try, holds the soil of his hills and enriches it with its decaying 

 rootlets. The temporary inconvenience to the farmer in his field 

 crops is more than repaid by its great usefulness. It should be 

 more extensively propagated in the State, especially in those 

 counties where washing is active. The seed may be sown, or bet- 

 ter still, small pieces of the sod may be dropped along in furrows, 

 and the area will soon be covered. 



4. Black Locust This is an invaluable tree to plant in thin 

 soil and washed areas. It thrives in such places, sending out long 

 fibrous roots, which, as the groves are usually thick, interlace so 

 as to prevent or arrest washing of the land. It has been planted 

 quite extensively in places for this purpose. But the tree is of 

 moderately fast growth and soon attains a size suitable for fence 

 posts; its wood is very durable and makes the best of posts or 

 telephone poles. An acre of old washed land can support such 

 a number as to make it a really valuable crop on lands that 

 otherwise would be useless. 



These are not all, but a sufficient number of these natural 

 remedies to the evil of land washing, so that we have no 

 difficulty in seeing where our wasting lands can be not only to a 

 great extent reclaimed but' made remunerative while under- 

 going reclamation. To these should be added well-directed, 

 earnest effort of the people to reclaim these lands by all other 

 available methods, even at cost of great labor. If there be doubt 

 in the minds of any as to the possibility of the undertaking, they 

 are invited to visit the Experiment Station at Holly Springs and 

 see what intelligent work can do along this line. Professor 

 Ames began work four years ago on certainly one of the most 

 unpromising areas in Mississippi, which under his intelligent 

 and skilled management, has been converted into a model farm, 

 the unsightly washes that scarred its surface all removed. 



The reclamation not only can be done, but must be done. We 

 must fill up the vacant places with intelligent white farmers 

 encourage immigration from the older states in every legitimate 



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