No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 201 



Recently I made a trip through the far-famed blue grass sec- 

 tion of Kentucky. That land has given wealth to its owners. It 

 produces a peculiarly nutritious blue grass, and it is highly pro- 

 ductive in grain and clover. The soil was formed in part by the 

 disintegration of the rock of the region, which is a limestone carry- 

 ing a comparatively heavy percentage of phosphorus. The owners 

 of this land are not skilled above others in the science of soil im- 

 provement, and their prosperity would not be in such pleasing evi- 

 dence before the visitor if nature had built their soil out of the 

 kinds of disintegrated rock that furnished the material for an im- 

 mense portion of our farm lauds. In this blue grass land of Ken- 

 tucky are lime and phosphoric acid in rich abundance. In respect 

 to otluM* elements of plant food this land has no advantage over 

 most farming sections. There is little danger of erring in our think- 

 ing when we associate the famous productivitj' of this blue grass 

 region with the dominating soil-building material of the region — a 

 phosphate limestone. Leaving this isolated fact for the present, let 

 us present another: 



It is the common practice among farmers throughout our coun- 

 try to use commercial fertilizers that are high in phosphoric acid. 

 The use of commercial fertilizers is comparatively recent, and the 

 vast sum of money expended for them has come out of the pockets 

 of a class of men who naturally are conservative in expenditure of 

 money. The universal tendency on the part of farmers to use many 

 times more pounds of phosphoric acid than of potash and of nitrogen, 

 taking the fertilizers used in the aggregate, is explicable only upon 

 the assumption that phosphoric acid has been found peculiarly 

 effective when added to the soil store of plant food. The practice 

 of farmers bears out the statements of soil analysts that nature was 

 stingy with her phosphoric acid when making most soils, and it 

 bears out the data of our scientists who are engaged in plot experi- 

 ments with fertilizers on our old lands. Most soils that interest you 

 and me have a known deficiency in available phosphoric acid. This 

 is a generalization from such full data that we can hardly err in ac- 

 cepting it. 



The third isolated fact Vvithin our knowledge that I present is 

 this: A limestone soil is presumed by a stranger to be a rich soil, 

 and the presumption rarely is at fault. The timber proclaims the 

 natural strength of (he land, the sods are a pleasure to the eye and 

 the homes bear evid< nee that the people have "a goodly heritage." 

 Poor farm practice may have reduced the productiveness of the land 

 to a comparatively low ebb, but it takes strictly bad farming to 

 accomplish this when a good limestone furnished the basis of a soil. 

 Very many limestone soils show by analysis no greater .supplv of 

 the elements of plant food other than lime do soils of other origin, 

 but the need of fertilization is slower of approach because the pres- 

 ence of an abundance of carbonate of lime serves, both directly and 

 indirectly, in letting a soil make the verv best of its natural 

 strength. For the ways in which this is accomplished I must refer 

 you to the scientists, and specialiy commend to von Dr. Hilgard's 

 late book on "Soils." It is an old saying that a limestone co'untry 

 is a rich country, and the saying is based upon experienr-e. 



A fourth fact, and one wholly disconnected in the thinking of 

 many land owners, is that clover grows less luxnriantlv upon a vast 

 number of farms in our Eastern states than it did for'merlv and in 

 14 



