HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 435 
extend that one, as they did with the navel orange inCalifornia. All the 
navel oranges in California came from the one tree that we have up 
here in the Agricultural Department garden now. 
We are having some success in hybridizing those grains, grasses, 
and legumes, for several localities. This leguminous question is a 
mighty keg teeta ae The only way we know that nitrogen comes 
out of the atmosphere is by the operation on the root of leguminous 
plants of little colonies. of bacteria. 
We know the nitrate beds of the world are limited. Suppose we 
get into a war, where are we going to get nitrates? This question of 
leguminous plants is a mighty interesting one. Away back in other 
periods of the world’s history the great nitrate beds were formed down 
there in South America—the only ones the world knows of up to this 
time. We could not yet along without the leguminous plant in our 
systems of agriculture. We can keep up the soil in the North by 
growing clover; the South is doing a good deal toward it by use of the 
cowpea, and they are beginning to learn, both North and South, of the 
great value of alfalfa. It is the most valuable and economic plant of 
which we have any knowledge. 
We are encouraging the growth of that. We have a very interest- 
ing question now with regard to all parts of the United States, as far 
as the growth of forage plants is concerned. We have very much to 
learn everywhere along Phase lines. We are trying to make ourselves 
useful. I had a talk with Mr. Spillman, our specialist, along that line 
this morning, and I gave him instruction looking toward the prepa- 
ration of a bulletin on forage plants for the East, for the Northwest, 
for the South, and for the Pacific coast, because successful agriculture 
depends on forage'plants, if you grow cultivated crops at all. Where 
a man can pasture all the time, the land keeps up—that is, most lands 
do; but where you cultivate, the very moment you plough land you 
have begun the process of destruction in that soil, and the more you 
cultivate that land without filling the soil up again with organic matter 
that comes from the roots of plants the’ more valueless you are mak- 
ing that soil every year. ; 
That has gone on in parts of the United States to an alarming extent; 
and one of the things we will do now in the Southern States in the 
boll-weevil investigation will be to provide object lessons all over those 
States with regard to the building up of the soil again through rein- 
troduction of the organic matter that has been oxidized and burnt out 
by continual cultivation for a century. ; 
With regard to forestry investigation, you find a pretty heavy esti- 
mate there. We have chopped down our woods, Mr. Chairman; there 
are but few left. Our great woods will be gone before we can repro- 
duce them. We have been at work trying to build up a bureau of 
forestry consisting of young gentlemen of education and character. 
And, incidentally, I might make that remark with regard to the per- 
sonnel of this Department all along the line. We are getting young 
men of education and character. We are insisting in most cases of 
those experts that they be college graduates, and we have a large num- 
ber of them now studying forestry. If you take up this question of 
furnishing moisture to growing plants—and plants will not grow with- 
out it—you come to the original proposition that the forest was the 
great reserve for water—the great reservoir. Our work along for- 
‘estry lines is to restore the hills to conditions to admit the moisture 
