334 BOARD or AGRICULTURE. 



Maine at Oiono, and I find it mostly here at Bangor. I feel deep 

 interest in this college; and we all at the Michig-an college feel a 

 very deep interest in all the other agricultural colleges in the 

 country, and that they must act together, and must know each 

 other's plans and methods. Everybody says that we are experi- 

 menting, and so we are ; and we must have all the wisdom we can 

 get from the experiments, the trials, successes and failures that we 

 make among ourselves. For that reason, I was anxious to come 

 here and see what you were doing. I have another interest in 

 Maine, inasmuch as I was born in Vassalboro', and brought up in 

 Augusta, and never left the State until I went to Michigan, and 

 was there but a short time .before I went, some eleven years ago, 

 to the Michigan State Agricultural College ; so that all the homes 

 I have in the world are Maine and the Michigan State Agricultural 

 College/ 



We are trying to do something there in the way of experiments 

 with fertilizers, but you must not expect too speedy results from 

 siach efforts. It has been one difficulty with us, that the farmers 

 of the State expected that in one year we should be able to tell 

 them, from the results of a single year's experiments, what to do. 

 Now, for my part, I cannot say that farmers are entirely to blame, 

 for the feeling of distrust which has generally prevailed in refer- 

 ence to "book farming," as it is called. I will not say that they 

 are not to blame for it, in part, but I will say, that in part the edu- 

 cated and sciientific men have also been to blame. The impression 

 you would get from the earlier writings of Liebig would certainly 

 be this : that if you analyzed the soil and analyzed the plant, you 

 could tell what manure to use to make that plant grow; but when 

 you come to try the experiment, you find that you cannot tell. 

 There may be conditions in the soil which prevent the fertilizers 

 from acting as it was expected to act, and there may be all the 

 elements in the soil that that plant uses, and yet the -plant will not 

 grow. We cannot tell. Book learning and theories, especially 

 theories in agricultural science, are too vague, they are not yet 

 established by weight and measure ; certainties are too far in the 

 future, to enable an agricultural school, either here or elsewhere, 

 to tell you, in a few years, just what to do, and just how to fertilize. 



There comes in, — and it is recognized now by scientific men 

 much more than it was when agricultural chemistry began to be 

 preached about, — the necessity of union and sympathy between 

 farmers themselves and those who make laboratory work and care- 



