No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 641 



the needs of plants and animals, are the men that are now required. 

 We are now living in a great age of material development. The time 

 of the pioneers has passed away. The hardships they endured when 

 they started in the wilderness are almost forgotten, but they 

 started and tugged and toiled among the stumps and stones, and 

 the probabilities are that some profanity was used, but neverthe- 

 less many of them became wealthy because they were full of energy 

 and willing to put it forth. There is a lack of these qualities in many 

 of our farmers at the present day; in fact, they are not able to 

 travel on foot much less to operate farm implements, and if the 

 theories of evolutionists are correct the time will come when farm- 

 ers will be born without legs and will have some bicycle or buggy 

 attachment in their place by which they can get along without any 

 effort of their own. 



Two great industries, namely, the cultivation of the soil and the 

 raising of domestic animals, or stock raising, seem linked together. 

 It is hardly possible to speak of the one without introducing the 

 other, and when it comes to practical farming their connection seems 

 to be almost indispensable. They are of so much mutual benefit to 

 each other, and it is almost impossible in these regions to operate 

 agricultural business successfully without a good herd of stock to 

 furnish the fertilizing elements; hence, the concentration of both 

 industries are required in proper and profitable farming and the 

 tiller of the soil should have a proper knowledge of each. There are 

 but a few places in the world where cropping can be indefinitely 

 continued and nothing returned to the soil without resulting in the 

 impoverishment of the soil, the most extensive of which is jjerhaps 

 in the rich Valley of the Nile, the granary of Egypt. The subsidin;^ 

 waters of the annual overflow leaves a rich deposit or top-dressing 

 of slime and mud which keeps up the fertility of the soil, and no 

 attention is paid to other fertilizing elements. 



The products derived from the cultivation of the soil form the 

 foundation for all other industries, and were it not for the farmers' 

 humble occupation, the wheels of commerce could not turn, Let 

 us all, therefore, make a resolution that we do better work, taking 

 more time and pains to see that our crops are put in as near to 

 the standard of perfection as is possible, even if we do not put in 

 as much of Nature's area as we would like to, as the results in dol- 

 lars and cents will more than repay us for all our labor. Careless- 

 ness and dilatoriness do not pay. We are in a progressive age and 

 the farmer of today must keep up with the times, and the only way 

 to do this is by careful and thorough tillage. His occupation is 

 not like the fertility of the soil — liable to "peeter out" — but will last 

 as long as the human race exists. 



41—7—1904. 



