260 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



forms these materials are supplied. Phosphorus may be purchased 

 in grain, or in other concentrated foodstuffs, to be fed with clover 

 hay, it may be, and then applied to the soil in the form of farm ma- 

 nure ; or phosphorus may be applied in the form of bone meal, which 

 is also a farm product, or it may be obtained from the great phos- 

 phate mines of our Southern States, as we obtain coal from our own 

 extensive mineral deposits. 



The decaying organic matter may be supplied in farm manure, 

 or in sufficient quantities of legume crops, not harvested and re- 

 moved from the land, but turned under as green manures, includ- 

 ing the use of rotation pastures, or still better and more easily, and 

 usually more profitably, by a combination of these methods. 



But there can be no permanent agriculture for these soils by 

 any system under which the phosphorus is removed and sold in 

 grain and bone in larger amounts than are returned to the soil, nor 

 under any system by which the organic marter of the soil is worn 

 out or destroyed more rapidly than it is replaced. 



On the other hand, systems of permanent agriculture for these 

 soils are not only possible, but they are more profitable than any 

 system under which the soil grows less productive. 



ANIMAL HUSBANDRY AND SOIL FERTILITY. 



(O. E. Thorne, Director Ohio Experiment Station, Wooster, Ohio.) 



Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : I konw that many of you are 

 tired and that some of you, at least, have errands outside that must 

 be attended to, so you will not offend me by leaving if you desire to 

 do so. 



I had the pleasure of speaking to this audience a year ago on 

 practically the same subject with which I come to you again, and if 

 I should offer an apology for coming back the second time with the 

 same subject, it would be the one that Dr. Hopkins has already given 

 you, that upon the soil rests all industry, and that the maintenance 

 of the fertility of the soil is the fundamental problem in agriculture. 



A year ago Professor King, in his address to you, called atten- 

 tion to the fact that, notwithstanding our greater knowledge of the 

 soil and its management notwithstanding our vastly improved 

 methods of tillage and husbandry, today we are producing no greater 

 yields of corn and wheat than we did fifty years ago ; and this not- 

 withstanding that in addition to the facts before enumerated, we 



