2S8 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



toral peoples depended for all of their fruit from the soil upon 

 just this process that I have been referring to in this ten-acre 

 lot. That is, they did not do anything to keep out the weeds, 

 or to stimulate the growth of the kind of crops they wanted. 

 They let things grow, and then they wandered around and 

 picked off the fruit, and if they got it, it was all right with 

 them, and if they could not they starved to death. The 

 modern agriculturist, however, designs to manipulate that ten- 

 acre lot in such a vvay as to keep out of it the things that he 

 does not want there, and to put into it the things that he does 

 want there, and by means of rakes and cultivators, and by 

 means of insecticides, and by this, that, and the other means 

 he succeeds in pushing up the kind of things he wants, and 

 in holding back what he docs not want, and the result is he 

 can depend on his crop. The Indian cannot do that. He is 

 dependent upon luck. One depends upon the practice of 

 agriculture and the other does not. Agriculture is the ma- 

 nipulation of the soil in such a way as to make it produce the 

 crop you want. Now the problem that the dairy bacteriol- 

 ogist has before him is quite parallel with that. The milk 

 which comes from the cow is the ten-acre lot without a plant 

 in it, without a seed in it when it first comes from the mam- 

 millary gland. By the time the milk gets into the milk pail 

 it is quite parallel to the lot which has had the plant life 

 raked out of it; but as the field still has plant seeds in it, so 

 quite a number of living things get into the milk from the 

 air, and from the dirt, from the hairs on the cows' legs, from 

 the milker's hands, and from the milk pail itself. Now the 

 number of living things that get into the milk in that way is 

 quite considerable, I assure you. The number that is present, 

 even in milk immediately after being drawn from the cow, 

 runs up pretty high, so that a lot of milk is very much like 

 the ten-acre lot w-ith a lot of seeds in it. What is going to 

 happen? Nobody knew anything about it five years ago. 

 And this particular problem which Prof. Atwater has referred 

 to in his talk, is the problem which we are trying in a very 

 feeble way to touch a little bit around the edges. Although 

 I have been working on the subject for three or four years, 

 yet the problem is so big that in that time it has simply been 

 established what the problem is. 



Now we find that there are all sorts of things going on 



