192 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



fact of the matter is that on the soils of Europe, which have been 

 occupied for agricultural purposes for a thousand years — yes, for 

 two thousand, and for three thousand years, within historic times 

 and with historic data — that the soils of Europe are producing 

 more than the virgin soils of the United States. 



Now, we went further than this in the investigation of this 

 question of the permanency of soil fertility. We asked ourselves 

 this reasonable question : If, on the soils of Europe which have 

 been occupied for agricultural purposes for a thousand years, 

 which are yielding more annually per acre than the soils of the 

 United States — if there was a question of an ultimate deterioration 

 and loss of plant food through finite times, the history of the 

 chemistry of the soils of Europe should show the fact to us now 

 so that we could prepare for our future state. 



WE ARE PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR SOIL MAINTENANCE. 



We have collected and collated the results of all the soil analy- 

 ses that have been made so far as they are published in the litera- 

 ture of the world; we have examined particularly the results of 

 the analyses that have been made in the past eighteen years since 

 modern methods of analysis were introduced. We find that there 

 is no significant diff'erence between the chemical composition of the 

 soils of Europe today and the chemical composition of the soils 

 of this new country that we call the United States. There are 

 variations in the composition of our soils, there are variations in 

 the composition of the soils of Europe, but the variation is as 

 great in the one case as in the other; the minimum is as low in 

 the one case as in the other and the maximum with any of tho 

 plant food elements is as high in Europe as it is in the newer 

 soils of our own country. What does this mean? It means that 

 we are, each of us, personally responsible for the cultivation and 

 the maintenance of fertility of our own farms. We cannot pit 

 back and shrug our shoulders, as we are inclined to do, and look 

 at the old fields grown up in weeds, and evidently deteriorating, 

 and blame an "unwise Providence." We cannot say, as we have 

 been too prone to say, that the trouble is that the soil has been 

 robbed by our predecessors. We can just as well agree now to 

 face the situation and understand that the fertility of the soil is 

 as permanent and as free to all who own the land as the atmos- 

 phere is to all who breathe air. While we can defile the air with 

 our manufacturing plants, while we can impede the ventilation 

 of our rooms and suffer diseases or impairment of our powers by 



