22 The Plant World. 



NOTES AND COMMENT. 



One who, even casually, turns over the cuiient literature 

 of the day must be impressed with the fact that the feeding of 

 the coming millions of the American continent is a serious prob- 

 lem, and that a large number of trained men and women, now 

 boys and girls in the schools of the country, will need to bend 

 their best energies to its solution. James J. Hill, in the World's 

 Work, shows, conclusively as it seems, that in 1950 the 200,000,- 

 000 people in the United States will not have neai bread enough 

 to eat unless the present low wheat average can be substantially 

 raised by better agricultural methods. To meet this pressing 

 need he would build a couple of warships a year less, would take 

 the money thus saved, and would start at least one thousand 

 agricultural schools in the United States in the shape of model 

 farms, which would furnish in every agricultural county where 

 they are located a working model for common instruction 

 in thorough tillage, the selection of seed, proper fertilization, 

 alternation of crops, and the whole scientific and improved 

 system of cultivation, seeding, harvesting and marketing. 



The measuies advocated by Mr. Hill have eveiy thing to 

 commend them, and it is to be hoped that the ag.icultural 

 colleges of the country will make haste to prepare for this ser- 

 vice the thousand and more men so imperatively needed. Mean- 

 time it is to be noted that in the working out of such problems the 

 longest way around may prove to be the shortest way home. 

 Not many years ago, in a university town, the study of green 

 algae was publicly singled out as one of the most unlikely things 

 that a young man could take up with advantage either to him- 

 self or the community. Yet it is now a matter of common 

 knowledge that the study of these and other insignificant organ- 

 isms of our inland waters is preparing the way for obtaining har- 

 vests of food from these "water pastures" which may go very 

 far to meet the predicted deficiencies in harvests from the land. 

 Prof. W. A. Herdman, in an address before the British Associa- 

 tion in 1909, discussed the distribution of plankton in time and 

 space and gave some striking examples of its relation to food 

 supply. The story runs thus: Man feeds upon the cod, which 



