the planting of cow peas at the last cultivation of corn. At such a time and in such a place in the rotation peas can be planted without additional expense in labor or team employment; the peas grow abundantly, make forage for live stock, and add nitrogen to the soil. When matured, the peas may be gathered for seed or feed or they may be left on the land.

In North Carolina a crop of corn on poor land yielded thirty-eight bushels of shelled corn per acre, and from planting of cow peas at the last cultivation twelve bushels of cow peas were picked, worth, at current prices, $1.50 per bushel. Besides the yield of corn, there was secured also a pea crop worth, at the lowest figure, $18 per acre. When the peas are allowed to die on the land, the stores of nitrogen that are put into the soil by growing this wonderful crop become very large in a very few years. It should be your aim and your purpose, therefore, to include in the rotation some legume crop for the nitrogen it controls.

Rotations are bad for weeds.-Then we should have the help of some good rotation for its effect in weed extermination. Weeds and good farming never go together. Crop rotation is one of the best weapons with which to fight weeds. There are certain crops that affect certain weeds differently, and different tillage tools incidental to their culture enter in. The grain crops allow certain kinds of weeds to flourish, since there is no intertillage to keep them down. Many rapid-growing crops shade the ground and make life such a struggle to certain weeds that they soon despair in the race and disappear.

Elsewhere is stated a case where corn was grown, a yield of more than eighty bushels per acre of shelled corn being secured when weeds were kept out and frequent cultivation given the land. An adjoining plot of corn, where

weeds were permitted to grow and no cultivation was given, gave a yield of but seventeen bushels of shelled corn per acre. Why this difference? The old explanation is weeds must be kept away else they will get water and plant food that should go to the cultivated crop.

And now we are told that weeds crowd the root territory of the cultivated plant, and that they produce a toxic effect in the soil, both being especially distasteful or hateful to the more refined and delicate and tender crop. Be the cause of enmity between cultivated crops and weeds what it may, every bit of evidence points against any favor being shown weeds. The whole trend of effort is toward the banishment of weeds.

Do plant roots throw off wastes?-A new theory has been advanced within the last two or three years, one that claims that all plants excrete waste products through their roots. According to it, no plant should be grown on a soil for any great length of time, else the plant excretions will accumulate in the soil faster than the soil can rid itself of them. Time is needed for making away with the excretions of the old plant or crop. When this is done, the soil is made more sanitary and more congenial to the new crop.

In this connection, then, a manure or fertilizer or other material that helps the soil is used, not because it supplies plant food, but because it assists in renovating the soil of waste products and in securing a more sanitary condition of the soil. Hence, fertilizers and manures become soil helpers by renovating and removing the excreta of the previously grown crop.

Now, it does not make much difference in just what direction you must go for the true explanation of poor soils; but whether you take one or the other, you find

good soils closely linked with good rotations and poor soils with poor rotations or a single crop.

Getting rid of insects and diseases.-Still another reason for crop rotation is to keep the land rid of insects and diseases. Grow a crop year after year on the same land and you allow insects and diseases to accumulate and spread. Rotate crops, on the other hand, and insect or disease gains little headway, or disappears altogether.

The right treatment of disease and of insect lies in a close crop rotation. Follow it and neither fungus nor insect can destroy your crop; follow it and your reward will be found in a plenteous harvest.

Rotations may vary with different fields.-You may be able to plan a rotation that will serve for all of your fields; many farmers are able to do so. Still, such practice is not essential, and it may be wiser to adopt many rotations-one for each type of land. If you have hill land as a part of your farm, get a rotation that suits such land; get another rotation that suits your bottom land. Make your rotations bend to the needs of your land and to your returns rather than allow either to bend to the rotation that may be fast bound, provincial and stupid when applied to your entire holdings. I know a field that has been given to a short rotation in which corn is grown every other year, and this field is more productive than it was fifty years ago. Clover and manure have been the treatment needed for the work. Yet it has been shown by actual field practice on the same farm that a different rotation, although clover and manure are both used, is necessary for other fields.

And so it goes. You may like a certain field for pasture because of water, shade or other advantage; and if so, get a rotation that admits a long pasture period and short periods for corn or wheat or cotton or clover or other

crop. If you have a field especially adapted to your money crop, use the field for the purpose, but adjust it to a rotation that maintains the fertility that even

increases it.

In the rotation when to apply barnyard manure.-Some prefer barnyard manure for the leading money crop, and that is good practice. But other things may enter into the problem. Where much barnyard manure is made, and where a pasture or grass crop precedes some money crop, like corn or cotton, it is well to apply manure to

the pasture land, spreading as made and applied. This is the easiest way of handling the manure also. Every season of the year finds the pasture ready, and not only is the pasture improved, but the money crop following it gets its full value just the same.

A good many years ago Yeddes wrote: "A pasture treated in winter to raw, unfermented manure will be so strong in grass, and the soil will become so rich, that, whether plowed the following spring for wheat or after