for pound than most of the wild nuts that we store in the attic or permit to lie in the woods.
The unplowable lands can be classified as:
(1) Steep lands,
(2) Rough lands,
(3) Odd corners of lands including farm windbreaks,
(4) Overflow and wet lands.
VII. UNPLOWABLE STEEP LANDS
1. These lands belong naturally in grass and trees and water pockets. If not too rough or too steep much of this kind of land can be cultivated in strips with water pockets and trees as above mentioned. In places that are too steep to be cultivated the water pockets can still be used to save the land and nourish the trees. On land too steep to have water pockets that are large enough to hold all of the rainfall, small ones may be used for getting trees established and for partial irrigation.
2. Rough pasture land. Here is one of the greatest wastes in land utilization in America.
The low yield of these hilly pastures has just been mentioned (page 268). Nearly all such areas have undergone cultivation by plow until by the processes of erosion most of the loose top soil has been removed, often to the depth of
Iowa, and Missouri stations showing that the average gain per steer on grass without grain is approximately fifty pounds per month for the grazing period of six months. It takes very good land to graze one two-year-old steer for each two acres, thereby making the yield of beef on good land 150 pounds per acre. On cheap land where it requires more than two acres to furnish pasture for a two-year-old steer the yield per acre would necessarily be less. There are some parts of this state where it would require ten acres of land to furnish pasture for a two-year-old steer during the summer (30 lbs. of steer per acre per year) and there are very few parts of the state where a two-year-old steer can be grazed on as small an area as an acre and a half." (Purdue University, Agricultural Experiment Station, Lafayette, Indiana, October 18, 1913, letter, F. C. King, Associate in Animal Husbandry.)
Similar figures, namely 150 pounds per acre, were found to be the mutton yield as a result of careful weighing and measurement of English grass yields by William Somerville, Professor of Rural Economy at Oxford University, England.
