Our annual corn crop is nearly three billion bushels, while the estimated value of all the timber on the still remaining federal lands is only one billion dollars. Again, our three trillion tons of coal is sufficient for an annual consumption of half a billion tons for six thousands years, whereas the United States Geological Survey has estimated that at the present rate of increase in mining and exportation our total supply of high-grade phosphate will be exhausted in fifty years. It seems to me that about ninety per cent. of the talk about conservation of natural resources is directed toward ten per cent. of the resources, when we remember the soil as the foundation of all agriculture and all industry. Do you know, Mr. Hill, that, at the Second Conservation Conference called by the President of the United States, Doctor Van Hise, of the University of Wisconsin, was the only man to raise his voice in the interests of the common soils of America? For three days the statesman and experts discussed the forests, forests, forests, and the waters, waters, and the coal and iron; and for fifteen minutes President Van Hise pleaded for the conservation of phosphate, _the master key to all our material prosperity; _and he was called a crank with a hobby. With deep respect, I am, Very sincerely yours, PERCY JOHNSTON CHAPTER XLII ADVANCE INFORMATION HEART-OF-EGYPT, November 14, 1909. DEAR father and mother: I can scarcely realize that I have been an "Egyptian" for almost two years. I feel that the time has been shorter than two months of school-teaching. Percy is so encouraged with the crops that I rejoice with him, although I could never weep with him unless I weep for joy. He says the crops needed only that I should stroll over the fields with him; that they would grow rapidly if I only looked at them. Think of it--I drove the mower to cut hay,--not all of the 80 acres, to be sure, but I cut where it yielded two tons per acre. That is on No. 4, where Percy applied his first cars of limestone. I wish you could have seen the untreated strips--no clover and only half a ton of weedy timothy, while the rest of No. 4 and No. 6 were clean hay of mixed alsike and timothy. Percy says that No. 4 produced as much real hay last year as all the rest of the farm has produced since he came, and that the hay crop this year is worth as much for feed as all that has been harvested during the previous five years; and the cattle and horses seem to agree with him. We sold our main lot of hogs for $654, and have another lot to go later. We are getting so many horses and cattle on the place, that we are going out of the hog business.