248 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



he is an exception — who can tell a difference of twenty 

 bushels of corn to the acre by the eye, between two adjoin- 

 ing plats, side by side. I doubt if there are many farmers 

 who can grow two pieces of corn and say which one yields 

 the most at harvest, — even if he measures it, — because 

 one variety of corn will measure more and weigh more than 

 another on account of the water in the crop, and the farmer 

 does not wait until it gets dry and then weigh and measure 

 it to see which one comes out the best. Now, it is this ac- 

 curate, careful work which we have to do. Part of our work 

 is to overturn popular ideas. Before we can make progress 

 in experiments, we have got to show the public the fallacy 

 of various ideas that have been in vogue, some of them for a 

 long period of time. 



Now I will pass on (because I do not want to take much 

 of your time) to the idea which is so popular and so thor- 

 oughly believed in, that all you have got to do, to test the 

 value of any two fertilizers, is to take two pieces of land, of 

 presumed equal fertility, and treat them in the same way, 

 measure the resultant crops from the two pieces, and inter- 

 pret the effect of the process upon those crops. The idea is 

 that such an experiment is not costly, and can be done sim- 

 ply and easily ; that any one can do it without giving to it 

 hard work and hard study. That is a great error. In 1882 

 I thonirht I knew all about this matter, but when I went to 

 my new field I found I was not right in my judgment. I 

 have not yet got to a point where I can say I know how to 

 test the vahie of two different kinds of fertilizers practically. 

 I do not know how to do it ; I have not succeeded in doing 

 it, and yet you will find that it has been claimed to be done 

 time and again. The fallacy consists in assuming that two 

 fields are of equal fertility, whether we know they are or 

 not Here are two adjoining plats of land which have been 

 treated from unknown time as one field. There is no differ- 

 ence perceptible in the grass growing upon that land, and 

 we have no reason to know that one plat is better than the 

 other. How can we tell whether one is superior to the 

 other or not? The natural assumption is, that if they bear 

 equal crops, they are of equal fertility. I think we all agree 

 as to thaf ; I did agree to it until I found to the contrary. 

 [Here the speaker made a diagram upon the blackboard.] 



