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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 28, 1978)
Brazos County boasts ‘flowers of every hue’ THE BATTALION Page 7E i MONDAY, AUGUST 28, 1978 By SCOTT PENDLETON Battalion Staff “You, in Kentucky, cannot for a moment conceive «/ the beauty of one of our prairies in the spmg.. from the midst of which spring up wild flow ers of every hue and shade....The flowers of the prairie are certainly the most beautiful which I have ever beheld. ” (W. B. DeWees, Letters From An Early Settler Of Texas, p. 28) Thus a pioneer 150 years ago described the area that became Brazos County. And in fact, the county boasts of almost every wild flower native to Texas. When the area was first settled about 25 percent of the land was prairie. At least 28 species of trees can be found in Brazos County, including mesquite. There are three kinds of native grass: mesquite, blue sage, and light blue sage. Blackberries, dewberries, wild plums, strawberries and persimmons are among the fruits native to Brazos County. Early settlers produced wine, jam, and other products from the bountiful supply of blackberries. Early settlers relied heavily on the wildlife for food. Tie woods and prairies were filled with bears, deer, buffalo, wild pigs and cattle, wolves, panthers, wildcats, wild turkeys, quail and prairie chickens. Temperature is relatively uniform across the county. The annual average is 68 degrees Fahrenheit with a winter average of 52 and a summer average of 82. The annual average rainfall is 38 inches. Droughts are common during the summer, but are usually short so no crops are damaged. Snow flurries aren’t unusual in the winter. Brazos County lies 150 miles from the Gulf of Mexico in the East Texas Timber belt, or, more pre cisely, between 96 degrees 5 minutes and 96 degrees 35 minutes west longitude and between 31 degrees and 31 degrees 20 minutes north latitude. It forms a rough triangle of 578 square miles. It is; bounded on the north by the Old San Antonio Road' and on the other two sides by the Brazos and Navasota rivers, which merge at the south end of the county. Topographically speaking, the county is a divide or watershed between the two rivers. The elevation is between 200 and 400 feet above sea level, sloping from the northwest to the southeast. The soil is largely a very fine sand with an impervious subsoil. This and the relatively flat topography causes poor drainage. Soviet agriculture hindered by uncooperative weather United Press International KIEV, The Ukraine, U.S.S.R. — Boris Alexandrovich Runov waved his hands as hp lectured the West ern reporters riding with him on the Aeroflot plane far above the wheat- fields of the Ukraine. You want to criticize farmers here, then let me tell you this,” he said. You aren t down there trying to grow the food you are putting in your mouth. Before you criticize farmers, think about the food in your mouth.” Runov is deputy minister of ag riculture for the Soviet Union, and he knows all about Western press criticism of Soviet agriculture. Ask him what the Soviet Union wants from the United States to improve its farming. I 11 tell you what the Soviet Union needs. I’ll tell you what we need. There is a pregnant pause as he focuses a set of steel blue eyes on you. “We need your weather.” To be sure, weather is one of the big headaches plaguing Soviet ag riculture. It doesn’t rain when it should, and it rains when it shouldn’t. It’s too cold, too hot, too dry and too wet all in the same sea son. But weather is far from the only problem the Soviet Union faces, and will continue to face as it battles to improve the average diet and de crease dependence on foreign im ports of grains. Financially, Soviet agriculture had five boom years between 1970 and 1975 during which annual capi tal investment climbed by 9.6 per cent a year. The increase has been ^smaller recently. In 1977, capital investment in farming totaled $45.4 billion. That is $1.1 billion more than the 1976 fig ure. Much of the money went toward constructing and rebuilding live stock facilities. Another huge chunk went into a plan to make poultry the most available meat in the Soviet marketplace. The results are evident in food consumption figures. Per capita meat consumption reached 142.5 pounds in 1977, up 5 pounds from 1976. As impressive as the figures may seem, they are overshadowed by thoughts of what could have been during 1978. The grain crop flopped last year, forcing the Soviet Union to import wheat, corn and soybeans from Aus tralia, Canada and the United States to meet its projections. The vegetable crop also was down last year, 23 million tons — 8 per cent below the good crop of 1976 and four million tons below the plan. And for the fourth year in a row, the potato crop was disappointing. It totaled 83 million tons, almost 18 million tons below the plan for an item that is a staple of the Soviet diet. In many cases, the setbacks could be directly traced to weather. In other cases, the problem can be traced to a central planning system that is so rigid it cannot cope with the fluidity demanded of modern agriculture. For the time being, the Soviet Union appears to be mounting a scattergun-type approach to solving the problems. Runov outlined some of the plans, which included: — The rapid development of poultry production. Poultry is con sidered much more economical than other meats because it takes less grain, and less time, to grow a chicken than it does a bull. — Intensive research on new va rieties of grain. Western specialists have said the Soviet Union has had success in adapting various grains to fit difficult weather conditions. — Heavy capital investment in opening new lands to agriculture, including the non-black soil zones in the European parts of Russia. Much of the investment will be used for drainage. The twisted tree limbs of dead oak trees which dot the Brazos Valley can add a haunting atmosphere to the area. y Mark Willis Artifacts found in Virginia settlement give picture of ‘Trojan Indian attack United Press International WASHINGTON — A treasure house of almost perfectly preserved artifacts in the ruins of a Virginia settlement are giving archeologists a vivid picture of a successful Trojan Horse-type of Indian attack 356 years ago. Ivor Noel Hume, resident ar cheologist at Colonial Williamsburg, said in a recent report, archeologists digging on a plantation a few miles away have found the skeleton of a man apparently struck from behind during the raid on Good Friday, 1622. ' The victim, his skull smashed by a blow from the rear, was found in mid-June in a hastily dug grave out side a fort protecting the lost town, Wolstenholme Towne. “Unlike Jamestown, we re seeing a settlement that has been undis turbed since earliest colonial times,’ Hume said. “The Indians wiped it out and nobody really re settled the site, so in effect it’s been preserved as if in a time capsule. “The artifacts we re finding, the layout of the fort, all these things are giving us an extraordinary view of those people who settled Virginia almost at the very beginning. Flecks of wind-blown ash and possibly chips of burned clay from daub walls found at the site support the theory that settlers held out as long as possible on that March 22, and then fled to the fort with In dians burning and looting tbe houses, the statement said. Hume said in an interview that the discovery is “a big breakthrougb for us.” He said it began when a corner of the fort was found three years ago, and “is very important to Virginia history.’’ All the evidence indicates the at tack was part of one of the best planned and coordinated Indian at tacks ever carried out in the col onies. “So confident were the colonists at Wolstenholme Towne that they had invited several Indians to join them, and all were eating and socializing inside the enclosures and dwellings when the guests struck,” said the National Geographic Soci ety, which supported the research. “All through Virginia, at com munities and houses from present- day Richmond through the Tidewa ter area, the same ruse worked on the grisly morning. The geographic society said the plan was masterminded by Chief Opechancanough. Digging in the fort area has pro duced a number of surprising ar tifacts, including a full helmet from a suit of armor complete with cheek pieces and visor. Beneath it was an entire backplate, probably from cavalry armor. Other military hardware un earthed in the fort included five fir ing mechanisms from matchlock muskets, several pewter lids from the powder containers for a mus keteer’s bandolier, and 140 bullets. Hume said fragments of glass bot tles, cooking pots and dishes and an elaborate iron fireback used to pro tect a fireplace hearth left the im pression that a “man of conse quence” lived within the fort. Hume believes that man was William Harwood, who governed,^ 31-square mile tract of land known as Martin’s Hundred. Survivors of the Indian attack fled to Jamestown and many were stric ken by a plague. * X ^/Le C&rtfte5 Jforse 3801 f'.aotk St. wb-ZWo "Town 4 country shopriisIg cenur l/fv <3* r\