THE GARDEN, FIELD, AND FOREST OF THE 
NATION. 
BY COLLIER COBB. 
(Address as President of the North Carolina Academy of Science. ) 
It has been the boast of more than one of our politicians 
that North Carolina could well be independent of the rest of 
the world, for we might enclose the State with a high wall 
and get along just as well, since we produce within our 
borders everything that we need. This boast was based on 
the fact that North Carolina puts something in every column 
of the blanks sent out by the Agricultural Department at 
Washington, that she produces a little of everything; but the 
inference drawn from this fact is far from being true. 
Not a single county in the State produces food-stuff sufficient 
to sustain its population. As our towns and cities have 
grown, the relative food production has diminished, and in 
most of our counties this diminution in the amount of food 
produced has been not only relative but absolute. 
For the last score of years the population of our towns and 
villages has increased as families have gone from the farms 
to the factories, often to live off the labor of the children, or 
from the rural districts to the city in order to give the chil- 
dren better schooling. The increase of our population from 
outside sources, too, has helped to swell the urban popula- 
tion. But farm lands are not increasing, the acres planted 
with food stuffs have steadily diminished in number, and 
under our old system of cultivation there has been a steady 
diminution in the value of the returns per acre. Even 
52 
[June 
