Ill, — 'THE RISE OF SCIENCE IN AGRICULTURE 



time some conception of the institutional arrangements needed to apply 

 research to agriculture appeared in the widespread discussion. Only after 

 the South seceded, however, was it possible to get action in Congress 

 in the form of the act creating the Department of Agriculture and the 

 Morrill Land Grant Act assisting the states to create agricultural and 

 mechanical colleges. The following passage shows the kind of idea which 

 lay behind the action of Congress and the expectation, even then, that 

 the government was the agency best fitted to mount the program. Note, 

 too, that even in the 1850's — thirtv-five years before Frederick Jackson 

 Turner published his first important essay on the frontier — an observer 

 could see that science was the most promising alternative to unoccupied 

 land as an antidote to soil exhaustion. Yet, is there any similarity in the 

 use of chemistry in technology as envisaged here with that described 

 previously by Hamor? ("Necessity of Agricultural Reform," De Boiv's 

 Revieiv, XXV [1858], 158-63.)] 



We have a numerous, increasing, and industrious farming popula- 

 tion; we rejoice in a comparatively rich soil; our agricultural machinery 

 and implements are eminently practical, time and labor-saving ones. Let 

 us add theoretical knowledge, science, system to skill, experience, and 

 inventive mood, and we shall not only be safe, but may reach the climax. 



But while yet surrounded by favorable circumstances, while yet liv- 

 ing in a country, the area of which is blessed to a great extent with a 

 most productive soil, requiring comparatively little toil and skill to make 

 it yield abundant crops, experience as well as scientific research, do 

 forewarn and admonish us, not to trust too implicitly to this apparently 

 most prosperous state of things, for rapid are the changes that may come 

 over us, while we are dreaming or boasting of our prodigious condition. 

 The happiest, wealthiest land may become poor and miserable, and the 

 most prolific soil exhausted in the lapse of time, "if not certain constitu- 

 ent elements are returned to it in proportion to the extent to which they 

 have been carried away by successful crops." 



The restitution of the continually disturbed equilibrium alone se- 

 cures fertility m infiJiitum; and wherever nature does not supply means 

 to that end, human industry and human skill must take its place. We 

 have striking examples for either relation. Thus in China and certain 

 parts of Europe, it is chiefly manure, and to a great extent artificial 

 manure, by means of which the soil is kept productive; in Hungary and 

 [a] few other regions, it is owing to the quick disintegration of peculiarly 

 adapted sub-soils or rocks, that a constant supply of nourishment for 

 certain crops is furnished; in the Nile valley and certain river bottoms 

 of the United States the yearly inundations secure fertility; and in the 

 Netherlands the same result is chiefly due to a regular system of irriga- 

 tion. But most of these examples do not form the rule, but rather the 

 exception, and the majority of agricultural regions are wont to im- 

 itate China, if the yield of their soils shall not gradually decrease. 



That the latter course is not more generally, and more timely 

 adopted in the United States, that there, some of the most fecund tracts 

 have been suffered to be laid waste, is easily explained. The immense 



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