The Bulletin. 65 



the sucker itself. But here we go on pulling the suckers off the corn plant, on 

 account of tradition — damaging our crop and doing a lot of useless work. 



There is an art in agriculture, but that is not all there is in agriculture. 

 There is a science, and what we need is to bring together the best of the art 

 and the truth of the science. I wish I knew as much of the art of farming as 

 my father, who is still living and who has farmed all his life; as did many 

 of your fathers. I think that perhaps some of you wish you knew as much as 

 your fathers and grandfathers did of the practice of agriculture. We need 

 that information; but we need it no more than the practical or practicing 

 farmer needs the science of agriculture. 



I think you need to know what science means. It means knowledge. That 

 is the only meaning of the word. Science means knowledge ; it does not mean 

 theory; and a man is a scientist only so far as he has knowledge, absolute 

 loiowledge. When he goes beyond that, he is not a scientist. We need the 

 science of agriculture along with the art, and then we will work toward a 

 permanent agriculture. If we had the science along with the art of agricul- 

 ture, if we had the knowledge to go along with the work, we would not have 

 in the original thirteen States four million acres of land abandoned. We 

 have done the work, but we have not had the knowledge regarding the princi- 

 ples. We need more skill in the practice, and we need to use the science or 

 knowledge regarding the foundation principles. 



A dozen years ago I went up the Rhone River to a little town in Switzer- 

 land. I found a gang of men digging into the mountain, working toward the 

 south. On the other side of the mountain range, over in Italy, was a gang of 

 men digging into the mountain, working toward the north. Five years after 

 that they came together. They had dug a hole through that mountain, and 

 they met v\ith a variation of less than six inches. How was that done? Just 

 by men who could handle pick and shovel? No, the work was done by science 

 — the science of mathematics and engineering — and the scientist knew before 

 any work was done that when the two gangs met they would have a straight 

 hole with a variation of less than six inches. 



I think that is a fair illustration. The farmer ought to know this year that 

 ten years from now his land will be richer and more productive than to-day, 

 and he can know it if he has the science to go with his practice. The infor- 

 mation exists, and we have simply to get hold of it and make use of it. 



One thing we have to learn is that food for plants is just as important and 

 just as necessary as food for animals. We have to learn that we cannot make 

 plants out of nothing, any more than we can make animals out of nothing. 

 There is a widespread notion that to get crops it is only necessary to cultivate 

 the soil, plant the seed, and possibly rotate crops. Is it true that it will keep 

 the land rich and productive merely to rotate the crops, put clover in the 

 rotation, and continue to practice such farming? I have some facts regarding 

 that, and I think you are entitled to them. 



I have the records here for thirty years, exact records, where rotation of 

 crops has been practiced — corn, oats, wheat and clover, round and round, 

 every crop being removed, for thirty years, at the Pennsylvania Experiment 

 Station. This was done on five different parts of each of four fields, making 

 twenty different pieces of ground under rotation during these thirty years. 

 When a man says that if you will rotate your land with clover it will keep up 

 its productive power, ask him why it has not done it with this rotation, 

 including clover on a limestone soil in a good clover country. Director Hunt 

 reported to the Illinois Farmers' Institute that as an average for the first 

 fifteen years the four crops were worth $71.70, and for the next fifteen years 

 they were worth on an average ?47.76. This is the best answer for the man 

 who says that rotation will keep up the fertility of the soil. You may seem to 

 get better results in a short experience by rotation with clover for a few years ; 

 but if so, it is due to a different kind ot farming you are practicing, for in no 

 long continued experiment does it do it. 



I can take you to a place where rotation with some leguminous crop has 

 been practiced over sixty years, and you will find that the productive power 

 of the land has not been maintained. It has decreased enormously, and if we 

 take the first crop grown in 1848 and compare it with the last crop, grown 

 in 1911, a stretch of sixty-four years, we find enormous decreases. Turnips, 



5 — December 



