516 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919, 
lack of proper treatment have become so nearly barren as to be 
considered exhausted and unprofitable for agriculture, and are wholly 
or partly abandoned. Some of these have improved by the interval 
of noncultivation, but the major portion require the addition of 
some of the elements of plant food or the elimination of deleterious 
qualities by proper treatment. 
The majority of eastern soils, for example, are more or less acid 
and require the application of lime or other antidotes to neutralize 
the acidity. They generally require also the addition of nitrogen, 
which can be accomplished by the proper growth of legumes to be 
incorporated with the soil by plowing under. Some also require 
the addition of phosphates or of potash, and the cases are numerous 
where such reclamation as that described is as appropriate and as 
profitable as reclamation of other kinds in other regions. In some 
cases large areas have been gradually concentrated in single owner- 
ships, and the system of tenantry which has followed does not pro- 
duce the best results but leads to the neglect and deterioration of 
the soil until its cultivation yields little profit. Where such areas 
can be acquired and cut up into homes they may be restored by 
proper tillage methods and the addition of nitrogen or other plant 
food until they are capable of constituting thickly settled and pros- 
perous colonies. It is often found that large ownerships and tenant 
farming are the accompaniments if not the causes of neglect and par- 
tial or entire abandonment of agriculture. Reclamation from such 
conditions is as wise and as necessary as any other mode of develop- 
ment. 
The purpose of the appropriation for these investigations was 
understood to be the feasibility of preparing farms for settlement 
by returned soldiers under a planned rural development such as has 
been carried out in Australia and many European countries with 
benefit both to the settler and the community at large. Investiga- 
tions have shown that many of the so-called abandoned or neglected 
farms in the Eastern and Middle States can be rehabilitated by 
proper culture with more or less clearing, draining, and leveling 
and the addition of lime or other needed constituents of soil. 
The investigations along this line were necessarily of a most pre- 
liminary nature, as one of the principal facts to be developed is the 
price of land, and no actual negotiations could be carried on to 
ascertain this in the absence of authority and funds for the purchase. 
The information, therefore, is of a general nature, but indicates that 
such opportunities of an attractive character can be found in prac- 
tically all the Northern, Eastern, and Middle States, where improved 
farms can often be purchased at but little increase over the present 
value of improvements, and by some or all of the methods of reclama- 
