Thirty-fourth Annual Convention. ^^^ 



or immediate objects and results of their culture, and the last 

 secondary or incidental. Grown for whatever purpose, they 

 reward the planter by increasing the productive capacity of his 

 soil, and are fertilizers wherever and whenever grown in appro- 

 priate rotation. Throughout the civilized world legumes are 

 grown for the purpose of increasing the fertility of soils. These 

 legumes are usually slow to develop, and as a rule occupy the 

 soil one or more years before the greatest good results. They 

 must be sown in early spring or in the fall, and are not so well 

 adjusted to the requirements of southern systems of rotation, 

 and are particularly unsiuited for rapid rotation with grain 

 crops. The cowpea possesses all the good qualities of these 

 other legumes to a maximum degree and develops them in a 

 minimum of time. With the exception of the velvet bean, the 

 cowpea is of more rapid growth than other cultivated legumes, 

 and assimilates the greatest amount of plant food in the shortest 

 time. This apparent superiority of the velvet bean does not 

 hold in practice, since it does not mature seed in this State in 

 sufficient quantity to avoid the purchase of a new supply for each 

 crop, and the tangled vines usually prohibit their being harvested 

 for hay or plowed into the soil in an acceptable manner. 



Every cultivator of the soil should have for his chief aim 

 its permanent improvement. It costs no more to grow a crop 

 of wheat, corn or cotton on rich soil than on poor. The in- 

 creased yield above the cost of production is profit. If one acre 

 will produce twelve bushels of wheat at a cost of six bushels, 

 there remains a profit of six bushels per acre. If another acre 

 produces twenty-four bushels at the same cost there is a profit 

 of eighteen bushels, an increased profit of 300 per cent from 

 doubling the yield. There is no one thing that the farmer 

 should keep more constantly in mind than the necessity of 

 increasing the fertility, or producing capacity of his land. Poi 

 the past four or five years the Experimental Station has carried 

 on a number of experiments for the purpose of determining the 

 fertilizing effects of cowpeas grown between successive crops of 

 oats, wheat and other crops. In every instance when these 

 tests have been conducted on soil of moderate fertility for the 

 benefit of either oats or wheat, the profit derived from the crop 

 of cowpeas has been greater than the profit from the above-men- 

 tioned grains, notwithstanding that the oats and wheat have 



