resulting, in a great many cases, from the ownership of too much land. There was no object in saving manures, and ploughing deep, when the next tract lay in virgin soil, awaiting the axe, plough, and hoe. The writer remarked to a farmer, in Burke county, that his corn looked yellow and inquired the reason. “Waal,” said he, “I gin hit up. I’ve worked that thar patch in corn now nigh onto forty year, and hits gin worster and worster every year. I reckon hits the seasons.” To an intelligent planter in Catawba, I explained my inability to understand how soil, originally good, could be made so absolutely unproductive. Evidently taking my question to imply some doubt as to the virginal fertility of which he had been telling me, he pointed significantly to an adjoining field, where a woman was plowing, or, more properly speaking, stirring the weeds with a little bull-tongue plow, drawn by a fresh cow, while the calf, following after, with difficulty, kept in the half made furrow. “You see what kind of work that is,” said my friend, “but in spite of it, they will harvest 15 bushels of wheat to the acre.” When, a little further along, I saw a wooden-toothed harrow in the fence corner, I was ready to give nature considerable credit. During the same ride, while crossing a sand ridge, we came where some men were making a clearing. The prevailing growth, standing close together, was a species of pine, uniformly about one foot stumpage, and reaching, mast-like, to the altitude of sixty feet. Between these were scrub oaks four to six inches in diameter, making the thicket so dense that to ride a horse through it would have been difficult. “It strikes me,” said I, “as rather a strange fact, that those pines are all the same size. What species are they?” “Those,” replied my friend, “are what we call old field pine. You asked me back there how land could be so completely worn out; here we have an example. That piece of land was cleared, may be, 100 years ago. It was then worked in corn, corn, nothing but corn, for may be twenty years, or more; not a drop of anything put on. It was then completely worked out, and turned public to grow up in timber again. Now it has been shaded and catching leaves for many a year, and has got some nutriment on top. They will work it in corn or wheat till there’s no substance left. The bottom was all taken out by the first working, and there will be nothing left to make a growth of trees a second time. When they get it worked out this time, it’s gone forever; over here on this side is a specimen. That field was cleared a second time ten years ago; now you see it won’t hardly raise Japan clover, and never will.” “Don’t you try to sell these old fields, and old field forests, to men who come in here from abroad to make purchases?” I inquired.