I may say, however, that $20 an acre is about the average price of the average land.  I had an option on a three hundred and sixty acre farm cornering the corporation limits of the County Seat for $30 an acre, and all agreed that the farm was above the average in quality.

Heart-of-Egypt is a small station on the double track of the Chicago-New Orleans line of the Illinois Central, and there are three other railroads passing through our County Seat.  Poorland Farm is less than two miles from Heart-of-Egypt and only five miles from the County Seat, with level roads to both.

As to the soil, I may say that in some respects it is poorer than yours, but in others not so poor.  The amount of plant food contained in six and two-thirds inches of the surface soil of an acre, representing two million pounds of soil, are as follows: 

2,880 pounds of nitrogen

840 pounds of phosphorus

24,940 pounds of potassium

6,740 pounds of magnesium

14,660 pounds of calcium

By referring to the invoice of your most common land, you will see that Westover is richer in phosphorus, in magnesium, and in calcium, than Poorland Farm.  But, while your soil contains a half more of that rare element phosphorus, ours contains a half more of the abundant element potassium.  In the supply of nitrogen we have a distinct advantage, because our soil contains nearly three times as much as your most common cultivated land, and even twice as much as your level upland soil, which you consider too poor for farming, but in which phosphorus and not nitrogen must be the first limiting element, the same as with ours.

The fact is that the nitrogen problem in the East was one of the reasons why we have chosen to locate in Southern Illinois.  I am confident that the level lands I saw about Blairville and over in Maryland are more deficient in organic matter and nitrogen than your uncultivated level upland, and probably even more deficient than your common gently sloping cultivated lands, because of your long rotation with much opportunity for nitrogen fixation by such legumes will grow in your meadows and pastures, including the red clover which you regularly sow, the white clover, which is very persistent, and the Japan clover, which it seems to me has really benefited you more than the others.

To me a difference in nitrogen content of two thousand pounds per acre signifies a good deal.  It plainly signifies a hundred years’ of “working the soil for all that’s in it,” beyond what has yet been done to our “Egypt.”  The cost of two thousand pounds of nitrogen in sodium nitrate would be at least $300 and even that would not include the organic matter, which has value for its own sake because of the power of its decomposition products to liberate the mineral elements from the soil, as witness the most common upland soils of St. Mary county, Maryland, with a phosphorus content reduced