132 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



to be broken — nature fulfils her mission in strict compliance with her 

 laws. If we, in attempting to produce crops from the soil, violate 

 a law of nature, we defeat our object just to the extent that we have 

 violated that law, because no man has yet been able to produce a 

 single plant from the soil in violation of nature's laws ; it must be 

 done in strict compliance with those laws. 



Let us, then, search out, from every source of information pos- 

 sible, the nature, extent and bearing of those laws, that we may be 

 able to conduct our farming operations more profitabh' and the 

 better secure the results we are after. The more closely' we confine 

 ourselves to a strict compliance to those laws, the more profitable 

 will our business l)e. It is true, we sometimes violate those laws, 

 but we pay for that violation. It is not through the violation that 

 we produce crops ; it is in spite of that violation. 



We have two fields, for instance ; one is productive and the other 

 refuses to furnish us profitable crops. Now, what is the difference 

 between those two soils? We say one is fertile and the other is 

 infertile. What is the difference between a fertile soil and an infer- 

 tile one? If we understand well the difference between those soils, 

 and then as fully understand the means and methods by which we 

 can change the one and make it conform to the other — that is, 

 change the infertile and make it conform in character, in productive 

 capacity, to the fertile soil, to that extent we carry on our business 

 intelligently. It becomes necessary, then, to know and to full}' 

 understand the diflference between these two chai'acters of soil. It 

 will be necessary- for us, first of all. to examine the plant which we 

 wish to produce from the soil, for the benefit to us of a fertile soil 

 comes from its capacity' to produce a plant. 



Nature, by the aid of sunshine and rain, and out of the fertility 

 of the soil, is able to build up a structure which we call a plant. 

 Now, nature cannot do this unless the soil be fertile. What then is 

 this fertilit}- in the soil? I say we must look at the plant to discover 

 that ; for I say nature builds up a plant out of its surroundings, out 

 of the soil in which it stands. A chemist will take a plant and 

 examine its contents and find that it is made up of ceitain element- 

 ar3' materials, to each of which they have given a name. Those 

 materials come from somewhere. A portion of tliem come from the 

 atmosphere and a portion from the soil. Nature combines them 

 together and erects a plant. 



