44 . MISSOL'Rl STATl'; IK )UriCULTURAL SOCIETY. 



VALUE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS TO HORTICULTURE. 



BY rKOK. L. R. TAFT, OF COLUMHIA, MO. 



Until within the last hundred years, the art of Horticulture has at 

 best been but an empirical one. 



The gardeners were aware from experience, that certain operations 

 were necessary, in order to produce the best results, but they knew noth- 

 ing of the physiology of these plants, or of the relations which soil, 

 moisture, and air bear to their growth. 



It was not until the close of the past century that Priestly and 

 Lavosier pointed out their connection, and a few years later that Sir 

 Humphrey Davy called attention to the atmosphere as a source of 

 nitrogen for plant growth. 



The results of their investigations were not generally known until 

 Liebig in 1840, brought them to the notice of the public. 



At first, of course, the teachings of Liebieg were not generally ac- 

 cepted, a French chemist, Dumas, among others, asserting that the 

 mineral constituents were mere accidental features of the plant economy. 



Although Liebig was in error in some of his conclusions, yet all of 

 the present methods of fertilizations are based on his assumption 

 that for the complete development of plants, varying proportion of cer- 

 tain elements are required. 



This period has been regarded as the beginning of a new era in the 



story of agricultural and its kindred arts. 



Among the noted workers^were Liebig, who from his own experi- 

 ments and those of others, showed conclusively the relations between 

 plants and the soil, and the importance of the mineral constituents ot 

 plants, and Boussingault, who in his labratory, and upon his experi- 

 mental farm in Alsace, worked out many important problems in plant 

 and animal physiology. 



In 1848, Sir John B. Laws, began on his farm at Rothamstead, the 

 series of experiments which has made his name so famous. 



This brings us down to 1850, when the first experimental station 

 under government patronage was founded at Mockern, Germany, and 



