The Huttig news., 1909-10-23
NO WORN OUT SOILS.
Lands Can be Kept in Productive State With
 Proper Attention.


 worn out and not productive, or so slightly productive as to be no longer worth cultivation, is a com mon belief. The old fields of the South end the worn-out farms of New England and the trials of the hero struggling vainly with them, are frequent incidents in American fiction.
 Yet DO less an authority than Prof. Whitney, chief of the bureau of soils of the department of agri- culture. declares that this belief is entirely without foundation. Farm lands may be so mismanaged or abused as to become temporarily unprofitable. Improper methods of cultivation. or the repeated planting of the same crop may re- suit in a rapaid decline of fertility.
 But this is not because certain plants exhaust the soil of the chemical elements that make 1t fertile. If this were so it is eyl- dent that large parts of China and India and other countries where the same land has been cultivated for uncounted generations would now be uninhabitable. But while the soil may become tired or sick, as it were, through abuse of it's powers, it's fertility or life remains so long as the soil itself remains.
 For Asiatic countries definite statistics are lacking. But much of the soil of France has been cul- tivated for over 2.OoO years. That much maligned Italian statesman, Nicolo Machiavelli. in careful lit tie treatise on the subject. notes that France in his time was natur- ally the richest country in Europe. This was. of course. without refer ence to mineral deposits, and re- ferred to surface products only.
 Now, the wheat fields of France produced from 1915 to 1924 an average of .86 bushels per acre. From 1855 to 1864 it was l5.o bushels. and at the present time is 2l bushels. The wheat lands of Germany increased in average yield from 21.Z5 bushels in 1881 to 26.55 in 1900 and now average 2o bushels. It is probable that Germany has outstripped France in this matter, chiefly because the German farms are not so subdl- vided as the French, and the Ger man farmer, faving more land, as a rule has more capital or credit with which to put improved methods in to effect.
 The art of soil management" " says Prof. Whitney, is to handle 100000 pounds of raw material the weight of soil one foot deep on an acre-as to produce the greatest amount of food and cloth ing and still leave the soil unim- paired" The soil, he adds, is the one ind estructable. immutable asset that the nation possesses. It is the resource that cannot be exhausted-cannot be used up.'
 Not so long as it remains. But soil may be so abused as not to re- main. The arid deserts are not the only ones. There are we'll watered deserts. There is one of the extent of some days journey in Persia. It is hill country where the rains are cupious and which was once fertile. But at some time in the unknown past the soil began to wash away into the sea, leaving only a bare and barren clay. The rains are so heavy that they carry away the clay that de- cays into plant-growing soil and the land is a desert.
 This example of how the soil may not be worn out, but worn away has it's warning for us, for there are districts in our Appal- achian region which are beginning to assume the same character . The trees have been burned or cut