42 VERMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



The situation which confronted these stations at the time 

 of their birth required a large amount of instructional effort 

 upon their part. This has not prevented, however, much in- 

 vestigational work, and even within the eleven brief years of 

 their life much has been accomplished. The agricultural press 

 and the institute speaker lean more heavily to-day upon the 

 experiment station and look more to its work and depend 

 more upon what it does than upon any other one source of agri- 

 cultural information. 



A large share of what I shall have to say in the remainder 

 of my remarks will be based upon the work of these experi- 

 ment stations in this and other countries. 



SOIL. 



When I was attending the Agricultural College of Massa- 

 chusetts, twenty odd years ago, I was taught a good deal about 

 the chemistry, and something about the geology of the soil. 

 The professor had something to say, moreover, touching the 

 physics of the soil, but not a word did he utter which indicated 

 that biology had any connection with such matters. Chemistry 

 teaches us the composition of soil; geology, the origin of them in 

 far back ages ; physics, the action of matter when it is massed to- 

 gether; while biology is the science of life. Hardly any of us 

 dreamed at that time that the soil was as truly alive as we were 

 ourselves. There has been of late years, however, a great ad- 

 vance in our knowledge of certain physical characteristics of our 

 agricultural soils, as well as of the minute beings, more particu- 

 larly of a plant nature — the bacteria — which inhabit the soil. 

 We have not time at present to go into the minutiae of this matter, 

 and I simply bring up one or two examples. 



I presume that it would be safe to say that if the farmers of 

 this State were asked why they cultivated their corn patches they 

 would answer that it is to kill the weeds. The killing of weeds is 

 really, however, a very secondary consideration. Weeds (in mod- 

 eration) are often a blessing, because their presence forces farmers 

 to cultivate the land. The primary object of tillage is the saving 

 of water. When we consider that a corn plant uses in the course 

 of the season, for every pound of dry matter it contains, three 

 hundred and twenty five pounds of water, we get some idea of the 

 enormous call the plant makes upon the soil for this important 

 constituent. If the soil is not too porous or the season too dry, 

 the crop will often get nearly this amount of water. L,et the sea- 

 son be in the least dry, however, or the soil not retentive of moist- 

 ure, this full amount of water may not be available. The inevit- 

 able result of a lessened water supply is a smaller gross yield to 

 the acre. The amount of water available to the growing plant is 



