452 Transactions of the American Institute. 



cumberland table lands. 



Mr. W. W. Powell, Crossville, Cumberland county, Tenn. — In 

 Mr. Lyman's paper on *' The Pasture Lands of the South," I notice 

 some errors which I wish to correct. The proceedings of the 

 Farmers' Club are watched with much interest by many thousand 

 readers, and it is desirable that they should be true. Mr. Lyman 

 says "These mountain sides, and high plateaus would produce 

 neither cotton, tobacco, hemp, nor paying crops of Indian corn." 

 In point of fact, cotton will grow on these highlands, and some 

 years it will mature, but cannot be relied upon as a profitable 

 crop. As regards tobacco, I have seen fine crops growing in this 

 county, and am informed by those experienced, from Virginia, 

 Kentucky, and North Carolina, that these table lands are in no way 

 inferior, while our white oak, and hickory lands, of which we have 

 a large amount, produce an article of superior flavor. It is not 

 uncommon to have these timbered lands produce forty or more 

 bushels of corn per acre, even after several years' continuous culti- 

 vation without manure, and with our wretched system of bull- 

 tongue scratching. It is a mistake to suppose these table lands 

 incapable of profitable corn culture. The same skill and labor 

 bestowed Upon the corn crop at the North, would make it a profit- 

 able crop here. Mr. Lyman mistakes in calling our soil a gravelly 

 loam — it is properly a sandy loam, and it lies over a yellow clay 

 loam subsoil, though the glades are as he describes. As rich soil as 

 I have ever seen is upon the eastern and western slopes of the Cum- 

 berland table lands, and upon the sides and top of Walden's Ridge 

 and Black and Crab Orchard Mountains. These last named rise 

 about 1,000 feet above the table lands proper, and furnish the best 

 localities for fruit culture this side of the Rocky Mountains, if not 

 the best even in the United States; and on these same localities the 

 timber is unsurpassed for beauty. The allusion to dogs and wolves 

 is not appropriate, for scarcely a sheep has been killed by either 

 for years. Of wolves, I do not think there is one in the country. 

 I believe that more than three-fourths of the sheep are never fed, 

 and they obtain their own living from the range and old fields. 

 Wheat will be a success on the table after red clover, and there is 

 not the least difficulty, with the aid of plaster, in making that a 

 success. Our wheat weighs from sixty-six pounds to sixty-eight 

 pounds per bushel, and our clover, when once set in the soil, is 

 perennial. I am convinced it is no difficult matter to raise red 

 clover so large that it will be troublesome to cure. Mr. Lyman 



