1 91 2] The Work of the Dominion Experimental Farms. 19 



chief means whereby the Federal Government has for more than two 

 decades striven to assist and encourage Canadian agriculture. 



In the year 1884 a Special Committee was appointed by the House 

 of Commons to inquire into the causes for the depression that had for 

 some years been experienced in Canadian agriculture and to suggest 

 measures which might lead to a more prosperous condition of our farmers. 

 This committee did its work thoroughly and well. In its report it was 

 shown that farming methods, speaking generally, were primitive in 

 character, irrational and wasteful, and that there was a widespread 

 ignorance of those principles which must be observed if agriculture is to 

 be placed and maintained on a permanent and profitable basis. Though 

 there were some good farmers here and there throughout the country, 

 who, by a judicious rotation of crops and the feeding of stock, kept up the 

 fertility of their land, the rank and file were steadily impoverishing the 

 soil, depleting it of plant food, by the sale of grain, hay, and potatoes, 

 without any concomitant return as manure or fertiliser. And what was 

 equally serious, as has been shown more particularly by our study of 

 worn or partially exhausted soils, during the past twenty years, was the 

 destruction of the humus or organic content of the soil following the 

 irrational treatment of the land. We have come to regard humus as 

 one of the soil's most important constituents, its loss not merely lowering 

 the available food supply, but affecting disastrously those soil conditions, 

 physical and biological, so desirable — nay, necessary — for the thrifty 

 and vigorous growth of our farm crops. In a word, not only were crop 

 yields going down, but for the most part the land under cultivation was 

 markedly deteriorating. 



After reviewing the condition of farming generally in Eastern Canada, 

 for at that time the great North- West was scarcely entered upon, and 

 asserting that the extremely unsatisfactory condition of our agriculture 

 was largely due to haphazard and faulty methods, and certainly 

 not the result of inherent deficiencies in our virgin soils or unfavourable 

 climatic conditions, the Committee recommended as the chief remedial 

 measure the establishment of Experimental Farms, which should be 

 centres for experimentation and research in field and laboratory and the 

 dissemination of information in all matters pertaining to agriculture, 

 general and specialised. The report received the approval of the Govern- 

 ment, and during the following session of ParHament, 1885-6, an Act 

 was introduced and passed, almost unanimously, authorising the Domin- 

 ion Government to establish a system comprising a Central Experimental 

 Farm at Ottawa and four brarxh farms. The Hon. John Carling, then 

 Minister of Agriculture, warmly favoured the proposed scheme, and lost 

 no time in putting it into force. His first act was the appointment of 



