68 Journal of the Mitchell Society. [ June 
The Strawberry Trust at Selma, a North Carolina organiza- 
tion, has an agent who gets each night reports from all the 
strawberry eating cities as to the number of crates of berries 
on hand, and he then learns from the fields how many they 
can supply, and an effort is made to keep the shipments just 
a little short of the demand. Then by uniting their ship- 
ments and sending them forward in carload lots, the shippers 
get a better rate and quicker transportation. 
Notwithstanding the South produces so much rice, and 
the entire product of the country, still we produce only half 
of what is consumed in the United States; but with the im- 
proved methods of cultivation, it will be but a short time 
before we produce enough for the entire nation. 
Of corn we can produce every variety from our coastal 
plain to our mountains, and corn culture is extending about 
as rapidly as the culture of rice. The culture of wheat is 
extending as new varieties are being bred for our lands, and 
wheat culture is extending into regions where wheat has 
never before been raised. New varieties of potatoes have been 
produced in our potash soils, and already the best of these are 
grown in the South, and the rapid extension of their culture 
will soon make us the most important potato producers in the 
country. 
Of cotton, we have not simply the monopoly of this coun- 
try, but practically the world’s monopoly as well. Experi- 
ments carried on at Darlington, S. C., have resulted in the 
production of a long-stapled cotton that will grow far from 
the sea islands. And the new methods of tobacco culture 
are showing us that we can produce all the grades of tobacco, 
and these in any quantity. 
Thus we already have the garden of the nation; we may 
become, nay, are rapidly becoming the nation’s field for the 
production of food stuffs; and whether we will or no, we will 
soon be the only forest that the nation has left, except in the 
national forests scattered over our broad domain. 
Forest trees depend more directly upon rock composition 
