Raising Hay and Stock in Montgomery 

 County. 



^^^ HE Tennessee Valley is fair to look upon, whether it be that 

 ^^ its hills and hollows are clothed inverdure or bedecked with 

 the gayer dress of ripening grain ; a beautiful sight is the grain 

 country of Tennessee, the big barns on the undulating hills 

 filled to overflowing with the rich harvest of the fertile acres, 

 the spirited, slender-limbed animals looking disdainfully from 

 the aristocratic barn yards in the pride of their long ancestry, 

 and the blue grass meadows of Kentucky, whose beauty has 

 been perpetuated in song and story — a beautiful sight they 

 are in spring or in summer. 



The most enthusiastic admirers of the rich and the beautiful 

 grain country are Montgomerians who whirl through its beau- 

 ties in upholstered Pullmans or who count themselves fortu- 

 nate if chance gives them an opportunity of spending a few 

 clays among the swaying grain, the pedigreed stock and the 

 rural beauties which surround them. And well worthy of praise 

 and admiration is it all. 



The Montgomerians whose commendation of it all has' been 

 so enthusiastically expressed have no call for explanation and 

 apology, nor has their discernment left an opening for criti- 

 cism. 



MONTGOMERY STOCK RAISING. 



And yet in their own County, in the County of Montgomery, 

 there is a "grain country," a "stock country" that is at once 

 beautiful and inspiring, a stretch of country upon which the 

 eye falls with the same delight as that with which it greets 

 the rural graces of Tennessee and Kentucky. A grain country, 

 a stock country in Alabama — it is a new thought. Still within 

 a few miles of Montgomery, within sight of the Capitol, hun- 

 dreds of acres are given to the growing of hay. both of alfalfa 

 and of Johnson grass, of oats, of corn, and within sight of the 

 Capitol there are barn yards full of cattle with a lineage as 



