90 The Dawn of a New Constructive Era 



Types of 

 Grass Best 

 Suited 



Soiith's 

 Agriculture 

 Distinctively 

 American 



they are the poorest type of pasture, and just the ordinary type of 

 pasture that the piney woods cattle subsist upon. 



There is one striking fact, however, in regard to pastures 

 in the piney woods which can be seen in the vicinity of every 

 town and village in the South, and that is that wherever the town 

 cattle graze continuously, you get patches of very dense sod con- 

 sisting mainly of carpet grass. 



We know that heavy grazing is an important factor in the 

 bringing about of this type of pasture. Where the cattle graze 

 continuously you have carpet grass, elsewhere broom sedge 

 and wire grass persist. Ordinarily, it requires heavy continuous 

 pasturage to kill out wire grass and to secure carpet and other 

 desirable pastures grasses. But when you once have good carpet 

 grass you can allow it practically to take care of itself. 



In it may come the growth of more or less Bermuda, but 

 there is not much of it as a rule. There is usually a good deal of 

 Lespedeza, however. In winter the pasturage is supplemented, 

 to some extent, by Bur clover, and large quantities of this can 

 be brought in. The carrying capacity of a good carpet grass 

 pasture is not very well known, but it seems to me it is not 

 much different from the blue grass pastures of the North. I 

 i^elieve, in general, a good carpet grass pasture will carry one 

 cow to about three acres. The best blue grass will carry 

 one cow to two and a half acres. Your pasture season for 

 carpet grass is much longer than for blue grass, and will be 

 eight or nine months of the year. In the light of our present 

 knowledge, this is the only type of good permanent pasture 

 that you can look forward to on these sandy loam soils. I may 

 say, incidentally, that carpet grass seed is not a commercial seed, 

 but almost any place in the South where you pasture heavily the 

 carpet grass will gradually come in. 



In this connection I want to mention one factor which is likely 

 to be enormously important. Generally speaking, the agriculture 

 of the North was a direct inheritance of the agriculture of Europe. 

 The only important crop exception is corn. When you come to 

 the South the situation is entirely different. The agriculture 

 of the South is almost entirely American. We have inher- 

 ited cotton, corn, tobacco, peanuts, sweet potatoes from the Amer- 

 ican Indian. We have gone to Japan for the soy bean and Japan 

 clover; to India to get Bermuda grass; to the Malayan region to 

 get the velvet bean ; to Africa to get cow peas and sorghums ; to 



