38 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



what is the method adopted by farmers as shown by their 

 practice. Now I am one of those who don't believe in eating 

 the pudding bag to find out whether the pudding is good. Many 

 a fine-spun theory turns out to be nothing in practise, and it is 

 fine to spin theories here on the rostrum, but can you carry them 

 out on the farm ? We must come down to the hard pan, to the 

 soil, and see if we can make our theories work. Science made 

 practical is what we want. Will it speak out like that on the 

 land ? Now, then, to prove this thing, which seemed to be so 

 remarkable, we went to the land seven years ago and tried an 

 experiment, and we have followed it up straight along for seven 

 consecutive years. Within the last year the thing has broken 

 away from us like a wild colt, and run over all the farming com- 

 munity. We couldn't hold it. If you will bear with me I will 

 tell you something of our experiments. 



Believing that the principles of plant nutrition as stated are 

 true, the first thing to be done in the series of experiments was 

 to find out what elements the farmer must use in feeding his 

 plants. We began on the soil about Amherst, where the college 

 is. I went to various localities and gathered soils, and in these 

 soils we put plants, and commenced to feed them with one sub- 

 stance and another. Four years we nourished these plants in the 

 hot-house and in the open air to find out what we must use, and 

 after four years Nature seemed to say — Give me potash, nitrogen 

 and phosphoric acid and I will do the work. She said this with 

 reference to such soils as we had gathered from different localities. 

 That seemed to be reasonable. 



The next step was this: Chemists know that the different 

 parts of plants require different materials for their nutrition. If I 

 examine an Indian corn plant, I shall find that the roots are made 

 of certain elements in one proportion, and the seeds of the same 

 elements in a different proportion. Now I must find the natural 

 relation between the stalks and the corn. "Ilumbug!" says 

 somebody. " Don't you know that some corn is cared very dif- 

 ferently from some other?" Yes; and that is the very thing I 

 am after. I want to know what is the material that nature must 

 use to make the stalks, and then if I put that in, I shall get just 

 what the corn needs in the way of stalk and no more. So I must 

 know the proportions that exists between the stalks the roots and 

 the corn. That was the next step we had to take, and that was 



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