HOW ABOUT PLASTER? 113 



led by supposing that a piece of iron or a clam shell or oyster 

 shell is a manurial substance, when it is fixed and certain that 

 it is not. We must cling to what we do know, and keep pro- 

 gressing. 



Prof. Chadbourne. I think it was last year, or the year 

 before, that I delivered a lecture before this Board that seemed 

 to strike some as containing very strange doctrine ; but it was 

 mainly a recapitulation of experiments that had been tried in 

 relation to farming, and tried under the very best circumstances 

 that experiments could be tried, and the results were very 

 wonderful in showing how little reliance we can place upon a 

 single experiment. Now, I wish to say a word upon one point 

 which the doctor has made. He says, when we have become 

 satisfied on a single point, we ought not to bring it back into the 

 field of controversy. That is true, — when we can become satis- 

 fied upon that point. But now another thing. He says that 

 we are to bring agriculture down to a scientific basis, just as 

 fast as we possibly can. I agree to that fully ; but I think we 

 are to take it for granted that agriculture is to-day very far 

 from an accurate scientific basis, and that it will remain so for 

 a great length of time. And I say this, because I feel the 

 necessity of every man's studying his own farm. I insisted upon 

 that in that lecture. Suppose I am told, for instance, that 

 plaster, about which we have been talking this morning, is a 

 good thing to apply to land. Well, I go home to Williamstown, 

 and I know one piece of land to which I applied plaster, and I 

 might just as well^have applied sand or ground diamonds, if I 

 had them, so far as any fertilizing effect is concerned. Right 

 up above it, on the side hill, if you spread plaster on the land, 

 you can see the effects of it clear across the town. I have con- 

 sidered that plaster is a fertilizer, and I go and put it on one 

 place, and it produces no effect, and I put it on another place, 

 and the effect can be seen, as I have said, clear across the town. 

 Now, I come back and want this thing explained. I understand 

 that plaster is a good fertilizer, and I did not understand, and 

 do not understand to-day (I am honest about it), why it has no 

 effect upon that piece of land to which I have referred. I feel 

 that with all our science, and all the general rules we can lay 

 down, there are still very many things which we do not under- 

 stand. " The value of that observation," as Jack Bunsby says, 



15 



