igoy ] Garden, Field, and Forest of the Nation. 55 
common sense, combining- laboratory practice with business- 
like methods. Such science our United States Department of 
Agriculture is engaged in and encouraging; so also the 
various State agricultural experiment stations and most of 
the agricultural colleges, corn breeders’ associations, truck 
growers’ associations, sugar producers, tobacco growers, 
private investigators like Luther Burbank, all laboring to 
lift the burden from the agriculturist, and make him indeed 
what the politician has been flattering him that he is. 
Greater progress has been made in all departments of life 
dependent upon the soil in the last score of years than in the 
I previous two score centuries. 
The most important of all this service of science to the 
! farmer bas been the study of the soil, the fundamental factor 
in all the varied lines of life that branch out from agricul- 
' ture. How to save it, how to nourish it, how to restore it to 
j life when dead, what it is composed of, how it is formed, 
j how to interpret it so that any man may understand it — these 
| have been, and still are among the great problems before us. 
I Their solution is being worked out and already that work has 
; revolutionized agriculture within our own State and is slowly 
changing conditions for the better in the entire South. 
Tobacco is grown in eastern North Carolina today because 
a soil investigator found out that the marls just beneath the 
, soil there contained in available form the lime that the 
tobacco plants require for their growth, and of course all the 
other essential minerals are there. Hitherto tobaccos had 
been grown on limestone soils, or on soils derived from 
igneous and metamorphic rocks rich in lime-soda feldspars. 
In a similar manner it was discovered that the sands of the 
sand-hills regions of the Carolinas contain both lime and 
potash in available form, whei*eas similar sandy soils of 
Western Europe are practically devoid of these necessary 
plant foods, but this soil is particularly adapted to the 
growth of the vine, and in consequence an important grape 
j industry has grown up in our sand-hills district. 
