Since that land was abandoned it has not really been idle. Nature has been improving it all these years by placing leaves and trees back upon it, thus providing humus; and also by the action of heat and cold. Some of this land, overgrown with briers and brush, has been cleared and found to be better and stronger than ever before. Much of the soil is sour, but that is easily remedied, and wherever a patch is burned over, the grass works in well. On some of these abandoned farms there is an excellent opportunity to combine intensive culture on the lowlands with orcharding on the hills, for the fertility is still there. If man could destroy this quality, that clings to all soil, he would have spoiled it centuries ago, and the race would have starved. But we are a long time learning how best to use it. Robert S. Seeds, of Birmingham, Pa., thinks he has solved the secret of unlocking that soil fertility, and he offers the astounding results of his operations on an abandoned farm, as proof of his claims. He not only raises enormous crops, but he sells his soil by the bushel, to his less enlightened neighbors to inoculate their farms. He tells the story of his experiments in a lecture called “How God made the Soil Fertile,” which is published in pamphlet form and sells for 25 cents. He says “The Lord made all the acres of the land fertile, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and gave it to man to live upon, to prosper and be happy. In doing so He never hauled a wagon-load of manure or a load of lime, nor bought a ton of fertilizer—and how did He do it? He did it with vegetable matter; and I thought if the Lord could do it, I could do it. This sounds a little conceity, but I mean it.” As a result of this belief, Mr. Seeds took to experimenting, beginning with the crops that store nitrogen in their roots, such as crimson clover, and with purple-top strap-leaf turnip. But the results were not sufficiently great to please this man, who was after all there was in the soil. He needed some plant with longer roots, and finally hit upon the cowhorn turnip, which will grow roots from 9 inches to 2 feet long, thus making available the plant food locked up in the subsoil. Finally he combined cowhorn turnip and rape, and now his soil is the most fertile in his district, and is so profitable as an inoculator of other soils that he keeps fields free from harvest crops so as to have the soil for sale.