FOURTH ANNUAL YfZAR BOOK — PART I. 29 



when a slight change in dates or places would have enaljled ail to be 

 supplied. 



There is another thing that a central organization can do. It can 

 select men specially/ qualified to discuss the questions that are of para- 

 mount interest in the several localities. In our State we have a great 

 variety of crops located by districts. We have the market gardening 

 districts, the dairy districts, the grain-growing districts, and various other 

 kinds of agricultural interests scattered through the State. An institute 

 is held in the tohacco district, we send a tobacco expert there. We do 

 not send that same) man into a dairy district, but select for this a man 

 skilled in dairy matters, and in like manner to the others. One man can 

 arrange for supplying all of these various interests far better than twenty. 

 a necessary practice where the go-as-you-please method prevails. 



In Ontario by means of the centralized system they have changed 

 the whole character of the swine industry in four years. The swine 

 breeders became convinced that the bacon hog was the hog for Canada, 

 because investigation showed that the English butcliers were willing to 

 pay more for bacon than for lard. They took up the matter in the insti- 

 tutes, and taught the members of the lecture force the kind of bacon 

 that the English market preferred. They had hogs both of the bacon and 

 lard types brought to the institutes, and diagrams of slaughtered ani- 

 mals were prepared and exhibited until the farmers were thoroughly 

 acquainted with what was required. Today the farmers of the entire 

 province are sending bacon to England. 



Agriculture has within fifty years become a scientific calling. There 

 was a time when anybody could farm; now it is entirely different. A 

 man must know something of chemistry; something of the principles of 

 plant life and growth; he must know about animals, their diseases and 

 the qualities that go to make the animal valuable. It has become a 

 scientific occupation. The reason some farmers are distressed today is 

 because they do not understand their business. We know of a great 

 many men leaving agriculture because they cannot make a living at it. 

 I do not know as this is true out here where your land is fertile, but go 

 into some of the Eastern States where lands have lost a large part of 

 their original fertility, and it takes a capable man to farm. But the time 

 is coming here, as elsewhere, when men will have to take care of the 

 future, when the capital deposited in your great agricultural banks will 

 begin to be exhausted. You, too, will get into the same condition as men 

 are now in the East and South unless you avail yourselves of the informa- 

 tion that science affords. 



Practical men are very valuable; we all agree upon that. But the 

 practical men of the country are not the men who have brought about 

 did not know about a balanced ration; we did not know about the silo, 

 the progress in agriculture that we have today. During all the centuries 

 we have had practical men; just as good as any of us, thoroughly capa- 

 ble, and yet the great advance that has been made in agriculture has 

 been within forty years, and we are indebted to science for most of what 

 we have. We did not know about the Babcock test forty years ago; we 

 we did know about commercial fertilizers in any very accurate way forty 



