to produce such a
crop 7,000 years, enough sulphur for 10,000 years and potassium for
2,600 years, but only enough phosphorus for 130 years. The nitrogen
resting upon the surface of an acre of ground is sufficient to produce
one hundred bushels of corn or a bale of cotton for 700,000 years; but
only enough in the plowed soil to produce fifty such crops. In other
words, there are enough of eight of the elements of plant food in the
ordinary soil to produce 100 bushels of corn per acre or a bale of
cotton per acre for each year for 2,600 years; but only enough of the
other two, phosphorus and nitrogen, to produce such crops for forty or
fifty years.

Let us grant that most of our farm lands in the South have been in
cultivation for fifty or seventy-five years, and in many instances for
one hundred years, it is readily seen that practically all of the
phosphorus and nitrogen in the plowed soil have been exhausted. Is it
any wonder then that we are having such poor crops? The wonder is that
our crops have kept up so well. Unless a radical change is made in our
mode of farming, we must expect less and less crops each year until we
have no crops, or such little that we can hardly pay the rent.

To improve and again make fertile our soils, we must restore to them the
phosphorus and nitrogen which have been used up in the seventy-five or
more crops that we have gathered from them. This is a herculean task but
this is what confronts us and I for one believe we can accomplish it. By
the proper rotation of crops, including oats, clover, cowpeas, as well
as cotton and corn, and a liberal use of barnyard manure and cotton seed
fertilizer, all of the necessary elements of plant food can be restored
to our worn-out soil. But the proper use of these requires much
painstaking study.

If the Negro is to remain the farming class in the Black Belt of the
South, then he must be taught at least the rudiments of the modern
methods of improving farming. He must have agricultural schools and must
be encouraged to attend them. The loss of the fertility of the soil is
the greatest menace of the South. How can we regain this lost fertility
is the greatest question of the hour.

THE ENCHANTED SHELL

H. CORDELIA RAY

Fair, fragile Una, golden-haired,
With melancholy, dark gray eyes,
Sits on a rock by laughing waves,
Gazing into the radiant skies;

And holding to her ear a shell,
A rosy shell of wondrous for