Live Stock Breeders' Association. 275 



position, passing from 2,000 pounds for grain crops to 8,000 pounds 

 for clover, each having varying powers of gaining from soil and 

 air, the elements of plant food. It is obvious that heavy rooted 

 plants and nitrogen gatherers, like clover in the decay of roots and 

 stubble, may feed plants like wheat that have low power to gain 

 nitrogen, from the great store of this material in their roots. Three 

 good crops of wheat can be got from the decay of clover roots. Thus, 

 too, a plant with great power to get potash feeds one of low power. 

 No two plants take the same ratio of plant food from the soil, po- 

 tatoes gaining 35 pounds of potash to 11 of phosphoric acid. Wheat 

 requires more phosphoric acid than potash. Plants each have their 

 insect and fungus enemies both above and below ground, and the 

 continuance of a crop multiplies these enemies in the soil used until, 

 though unnoticed, they impair crop yields. I need not multiply 

 reasons nor detail data as facts in abundance unite with philosophy 

 in proclaiming rotations as of very great importance in a wise 

 course of farming. 



Secondly. I make much of regulated tillage. "Tillage is 

 manuring" is an epigrammatic statement that has come down the 

 agricultural ages since the divine command to "Till and to keep it." 

 One of Job's moral virtues, as claimed by him, was that of good 

 plowing. Virgil, the world's greatest epic poet, said, "Vex the 

 earth with continual hammerings." Tull, first philosopher of agri- 

 culture, taught the adequacy of tillage as a source of plant food, and 

 Roberts is still proclaiming the power of tillage. Modern science 

 explains its success. The dead air held in the air spaces of gross 

 land reduces to the minimum the circulation of air in the soil. 

 Hence it was that Sturtevant found but 3-10 of a pound of nitro- 

 gen per acre under grass, while the open soil frequently tilled for 

 the summer showed 210 pounds, resulting from the bacterial ac- 

 tivity and oxidizing effects of a freer circulation of air in the opened 

 soil. "The tooth of time" had opportunity to apply its teeth. 



But Snyder's data, showing that a virgin prairie soil, having 

 16,000 pounds of nitrogen, had lost nearly one-half of it in nine- 

 teen years of continuous wheat crops, shows not only the tremen- 

 dous influence of tillage in plant food solution in the soil, but the 

 supreme folly of the western non-rotation farming. In New Eng- 

 land we till eleven per cent, of our soil, and invite to the minimum 

 the aid of nature, while here you till 89 per cent, and invite the 

 rapid burning up of the organic matter of the soil. 



This wasted nitrogen, if returned in fertilizers that you are 

 now beginning to buy, will cost you 20 cents per pound. You are 



