384 MISSOURI STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and not the "stars" only, but their less brilliant but more domestic 

 sisters, the grains, vegetables and fruits. 



Noticing the myriads of insects that were feeding on the fruits 

 and fiowers and devastating garden and field, science undertook the 

 task of determining their habits and life history, and of devising means 

 of preventing their depredations. Her attention was called to the 

 existence of diseases among plants. The grains rusted, grapes rotted, 

 apples had the scab, peach trees had the yellows, potatoes decayed 

 and disease and death seemed everywhere in the vegetable world. So, 

 making use of the microscope, one of her modern and most valuable 

 -devices for finding facts, she inquired into the causes of these plant 

 diseases and has succeeded to a wonderful extent in determining them 

 and applying remedies. 



But to undertake to enumerate all of the ways in which science has 

 developed knowledge applicable to agriculture would occupy more 

 time than is at my disposal. Suffice it to say that it would be difficult 

 to point out a direction in which science has worked so fruitfully dur- 

 ing the last fifty years that has not yielded a multitude of facts of value 

 to the tiller of the soil. And the result is that instead of agriculture 

 being now ruled by Art, as has been the case since man began to till the 

 soil, it is now under the sway of Science. 



Let us stop for a moment and talk about that word "science." 

 Many, particularly farmers, seem to have a dislike for and dread of it. 



There is nothing terrible about the word, and it is not one which 

 must be kept at a distance. Science means simply an accumulation of 

 facts systematized. Everybody of intelligence has more or less of the 

 elements of science. A farmer may have an utter contempt for the 

 science of botany, but every fact which he knows about plants is merely 

 so much of that science, and if all these were summed up it would be 

 found that he has a good deal of the despised article in his head. A 

 simple admission of this fact on his part would be a very long stride on 

 the road to knowledge. And here, if I mistake not, is the beginning of 

 much of the work of to-day in our field. The farmer must be led to an 

 appreciation of the value of knowledge, and then to the acquisition of 

 it. I refer to technical knowledge directly applicable in his business 

 of farming. I said that farmers were lamentably lacking in technical 

 knowledge. This, no doubt, is seriously questioned, but let us examine 

 them a little. 



Of the 300,000 farmers in the State of Missouri, what proportion of 

 them, do you suppose, knows what constitutes a pistilate strawberry, 

 or knowing this, would be able, by examination, to distinguish a variety 

 of one class from one of the other ? And yet any practical strawberry 



