32 CLIMATES. 



falls down in the teens above zero, but the mean winter temperature 

 is far above the freezing point and zero is unknown. This section 

 was originally covered with a vast forest of oaks, remnants of which 

 are still found here and there in giant trees, especially in the capital 

 city of Raleigh. But the second growth following the destruction of 

 the original oak forest is largely of pine, which has been Nature's 

 cure for man's waste. All the section north of the sand-hills is well 

 adapted to general farming with grain in rotation with peas and 

 cotton, and with good farming there is no money crop in the United 

 States that can compare in profit with cotton. Good farmers in this 

 section can make a bale or more of cotton per acre, though the general 

 average is much less. Northern men coming South are too apt to 

 want to ignore the cotton crop, thinking that the deterioration of the 

 soil has been due to the culture of cotton, when in fact there is no 

 crop that makes a lighter demand on the soil when properly culti- 

 vated in a good rotation, and none that admits of a more rapid and 

 profitable improvement of the soil through the growing of legumes 

 and the feeding of live-stock. In this climate the expensive barns of 

 the North are not needed to protect cattle, for they can run out most 

 of the time and find pasture, except in the coldest weather, and 

 then open sheds furnish all that is needed. As has already been 

 stated, on all the red-clay soils of the State the Lespedeza striata, 

 known as Japan clover, has spread and furnishes an admirable 

 summer pasture on lands otherwise waste. Mr. French, who came 

 and settled in Rockingham County from the blue-grass pastures 

 of Ohio, and has gone into the breeding of Polled Angus cattle 

 with great success, stated recently in a public address that he 

 found that the Japan clover gave him a better pasture than the 

 blue-grass in Ohio, for it is at its best in the hot weather of sum- 

 mer when the blue-grass is parched and dried. With abundant 

 summer pasture and the wonderful forage crops that can be grown 

 for hay in the shape of cow-peas, vetch, and soy-beans, it should be an 

 easy matter to raise the finest of cattle in all the upland country of 

 North Carolina. County after county in the piedmont section is 

 being cleared of the fever ticks and being admitted north of the 

 National quarantine line, and as this is done the raising of cattle for 

 the Northern trade is becoming more profitable. For general grazing 

 the grassy plateaus of the northwestern mountain section are equal 

 to any in the whole country, and thousands of cattle of high grade 

 are now raised there and sent west as feeders, the great elevation of 

 the farms there precluding the profitable cultivation of corn. But 

 in all the southern part of the mountain section the milder climate 

 admits of wonderfully fine crops of corn, while the mountain balds 

 furnish the summer pasture, and the markets southward for the 

 finished cattle are inexhaustible. 



