No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 527 



them resistant to any contingency of weather conditions, but in prac- 

 tice the thermometer, indicates a low temperature after some warm 

 days swelling the buds, or a May or even June frost may find the 

 blossoms open and destroy our prospects and all our pet theories 

 in a night. 



Theory and practice go together. While theory is before practice 

 it may be designated the advance agent to progress. It is necessary 

 in practice to give new theories careful consideration, to decide 

 whether they can be adapted to our conditions. The advocates of 

 constant cultivation, mulching, planting stub trees, repeated spray- 

 ing, might find their theories useless and impracticable under differ- 

 ent conditions and other locations. We have some excellent teach- 

 ers in the different branches of agriculture and some who know very 

 little about any. It is related that an agricultural and city editor 

 of a town paper, visited a friend in the country, arriving with a con- 

 veyance when the proprietor was away. They undertook to unhitch 

 the horses, and after unbuckeling permanent fastenings and un- 

 neccessary parts, put the horses in the stable. They tried to re- 

 move the collars, and after pulling and tugging in vain, concluded 

 that the collars were put on when thp horses were young, after which 

 they grew so large that they must remain on permanently. For- 

 tunately a little girl who had directed them where to place the team, 

 observed them working on a wrong theory, came to their relief and 

 by simply reversing the collar removed it with ease. Theoretically, 

 dairying is a highly remunerative business, and if all railch cows were 

 ideal milk producers giving upwards of a barrel of milk daily the 

 problem of the price would be an important consideration when 

 the price is 80 cents to a dollar for forty quarts. One of the practi- 

 cal problems is to get up early mornings, do the necessary chores, 

 get a team ready to start breaking new ground during hot days 

 when the thermometer registers 90 degrees and above, striking 

 stones, here, and stumps and roots, turning over a bumble-bees' or 

 yellow-jackets' nest, unable to go either ahead or backward is in- 

 tensely practical. 



The theory of spraying trees with Bordeaux mixture, or lime sul- 

 phur and salt which must be boiled and put on hot is a dreaded task, 

 and practically about as disagreeable as weeding an onion patch, 

 or hauling and spreading manure in August. 



Theoretically, there is both pleasure and profit in bee-keeping, but 

 when queens are to be introduced, colonies divided, swarms hived, 

 or honey removed, working in the heat of summer, wearing a veil 

 while working among a lot of enraged bees, bent on business, try- 

 ing to find places to insert their poisonous darts, it is neither as 

 pleasant nor as profitable as writers would have us believe. We 

 profit, however, and enjoy privileges and blessings that are due to 

 theory and carried to practical success. A few men of note, the 

 names of Columbus, NcAvton, Harvey, Watt, Howe, Morse, Pasteur, 

 Westinghouse, are familiar to everyone, each one of those named 

 worked out a theory that are of vast ])ractical utility. In horticul- 

 tural lines, Luther Burba nk, working out theories that prove practi- 

 cally of much value, and among the latest that of having produced 

 a spineless cactus plant, which will thrive in rainless districts and 

 afford food for animals where none can live now. 



