"Nevertheless the erroneous teaching so widely promulgated by the
federal Bureau of Soils is undoubtedly a most potent influence
against the adoption of systems of positive soil improvement in the
United States, because it is disseminated from the position of
highest authority. Other peoples have ruined other lands, but in no
other country has the powerful factor of government influence ever
been used to encourage the farmers to ruin their lands."






CHAPTER XXXII

GUESSING AND GASSING





AS we were riding to Montplain yesterday," said Adelaide to Percy,
soon after they started for Blue Mound, "Professor Barstow told me
that in his opinion all that was needed to redeem these old lands of
Virginia and the Carolinas is plenty of efficient labor, such as he
thinks we had before the war. I know papa does not agree with him in
that, but Professor said that soils do not wear out if well
cultivated, that in New England they grow as large crops as ever,
and that in Europe, on the oldest lands the crop yields are very
much larger than in the United States; and in fact that the European