190 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



plemer.ts I saw during that drive was on the farm of a pure bred stock 

 breeder. However, I may say, parenthetically, that I don't think he is 

 in attendance at this meeting. 



SOILS AND SEEDS. 



In my boyhood days, back in the Buckeye state, I heard old farmers 

 boast that a certain field had been cropped continuously in corn for 

 forty years, but they would mournfully admit that their yield was "sorter 

 nubbiny, kinder run out." The "new methods" of modern agriculture 

 teach that such a practice robs and impoverishes the soil ; that unless 

 we give back to it in some form an equivalent for the plant food taken 

 from it we lessen its productive capacity — also, that if proj^erly managed, 

 the degree of soil fertility may not only be fully maintained while pro- 

 ducing a maximum yield but may actually be increased. The aforesaid 

 "double decade" corn grower, uninformed of the facts that like pro- 

 duces like and that cereals allowed to follow their natural inclinations in- 

 evitably tend to deterioration rather than improvement, selected his 

 seed corn from his crib of nubbins — the variegated result was designated 

 "kaliker corn" and was just a little bit meaner than the parent stock 

 You expert corn growers now talk about breeding corn, meaning there- 

 by improving it by the careful selection of foundation stock (the seed), 

 mating it with the requisite conditions of soil fertility and tilth and the 

 application of known facts relative to pollination by means of which 

 you maintain its pure bred standard and reasonably expect the off- 

 spring will be just a little better than the parent stock in both quality 

 and yield, and that the net results will more than compensate for the 

 cost of their achievement. This is a "new method" of corn growing and 

 it will apply with equal force to every other crop grown on the farm. 



NEW LIVE STOCK METHODS. 



When we contemplate the apparently well authenticated statement 

 that less than two per cent of the live stock of the United States is pure 

 bred, the remainder being grades and scrubs, the conclusion must obtrude 

 itself that most of the hosts were absent from home when Mr. and Mrs. 

 New Methods made their round of calls. The old method was to breed 

 and continue to breed scrubs ; the new method would banish the scrubs 

 and supply their places with pure bred live stock, all kinds. Many, 

 many years of patient, persistent elTort, representing the natural life- 

 time of two generations, supplemented by the expenditure of millions 

 of dollars, have been devoted to the improvement of live stock in this 

 country, and yet we face the humiliating fact that but one-fiftieth of the 



