No. 5. DEPARTMEiVT OF AGRICULTURE. 401 



LIVESTOCK AND SOIL FERTILITY 



BY DR. C. E. THORNE, Ohio Experiment Station, Woostcr, Ohio. 



Gentlemen: In what I said yesterday — I talked a good while — I 

 meant to call attention to the experiment at your State College 

 which takes rank as the earliest, most thorough and complete ex- 

 periment in fertility in the world. Started thirty- three years ago, 

 on a very comprehensive plan, it has continued from that day to this 

 without interruption, its only object the study of the use of ferti- 

 lizer, it has passed comprehension in value. That the results ob- 

 tained there, in many cases, differ from those obtained elsewhere, is 

 not at all a matter derogatory to the experiment, but, on the con- 

 trary, they are finding in this work that no two soils give exactly 

 the same result; and they are finding, also, that it is necessary to 

 conduct these experiments very carefully, and then compare the out- 

 line of an experiment on one type of soil, with the experiment on an- 

 other type of soil. 



I was very much interested this morning in a paper I heard up- 

 stairs — I was up there the early part of the morning — on the varie- 

 ties of Pennsylvania soil. That paper was of the utmost value to 

 the Pennsylvania farmer, because you have a larger variety of soils, 

 and more different kinds of rock, and farm under different conditions 

 of rainfall and temperature, such as exists probably nowhere else in 

 the world and have a question of fertility and soil maintenance to 

 work out, such as exists probably nowhere else in the world. 



Lime — There vras a good deal said about it in the past. These 

 experiments at your State College were conducted upon a limestone 

 soil, as it was at that day. The experiments were conducted at a 

 time when the whole work of field experiments was still in its in- 

 fancv, and thev had to go it blindlv. Thev were in a state where it 

 was customary to use large quantities of lime — very large quantities, 

 as compared with what is recommended today; and their experi- 

 ments were of untold value in showing the foolishness of using too 

 much lime. Now, where they applied one ton of lime every two years 

 in a four years rotation two tons of lime every four years — and no 

 other fertilizer, the result was that this large application of lime on 

 a limestone soil brought about a decrease rather than an increase. 

 Just that same thing would be likely to happen to an ordinary 

 farmer, and he would not know why his crops were falling off. On 

 the other hand, where two tons of ground, raw limestone have been 

 used alternately with six tons of barnyard manure, there has been 

 a marked increase over the use of the manure alone. One thing that 

 was learned as the result of that experiment is that it is necessary 

 to use lime in connection with other fertilizer. Lime cannot be used 

 alone if we wish to keep up the fertility of our farms. 



You cannot be proud enough of this work, supplemented, as it is, 

 by other similar work in your State. 



Unless I limit myself by a manuscript, I am apt to talk too long, 

 so with your permission, I will read what I have to say, at least in 

 26—5—1914 



