SCIENCE IN ITS APPLICATION. 87 



to clear up new land, as old fields became barren from 

 constant cropping without manures or fertilizers. 

 Cocke declared against tobacco years ago, because "its 

 culture had exhausted whole counties in Virginia, from 

 the Atlantic to the head of tide waters," but the same 

 exhaustion is found in sections where tobacco was never 

 grown. 



In both instances, soil poverty was due to soil deple- 

 tion constant taking away of crops and not putting 

 back what they removed from the soil. Low in prices 

 as lands were, it was found much easier and cheaper to 

 occupy fresh soils than reclaim exhausted ones. Com- 

 plaint is now made in the "White Burley districts of 

 Kentucky and Ohio, that the soil is becoming rapidly 

 exhausted under tobacco culture, even where manuring 

 is practiced. This is easily accounted for. The surface 

 of the country is rolling, or extremely broken, and when 

 planted in a crop that requires clean cultivation, vast 

 quantities of the surface soil are swept into the valleys 

 with every rain that falls, gullies form rapidly, and the 

 earth becomes scarified with gaping, ugly wounds, down 

 which flows the very lifeblood of the soil. The remedy 

 for this waste is rotation with grasses, clover, alfalfa 

 and grain crops, to bind the soil. 



The truth is, no crop is exhaustive if it is properly 

 fertilized ; all that is required is to supply an abundance 

 of every element that the plant needs, and of the right 

 quality and condition ; for if this is not done, the latent 

 resources of the soil are drawn upon to supply the defi- 

 ciency, and the soil is impoverished just so far as it is 

 drained of any element essential to plant growth. Fur- 

 thermore, the subject of the exhaustion of the soil by 

 tobacco should be considered from two standpoints : 

 First, what is actually removed from the soil by the sale 

 of the crop ; second, what is required in the soil to pro- 

 duce the crop. And a casual view of the subject would 



