26 Transactions of the Canadian Institute. [vol. x 



the Central Farm devoted to general agriculture. At certain fixed prices 

 for various products the value of the crop harvested that year was 

 $2,776.66. Using the same prices as in 1899, the value of the crops off 

 the same area in 1911 was $5,478.90, and will be considerably greater 

 than this in 1912, all figures for which crops are not yet available. This 

 shows the effect of good cultivation and right rotations on a given area. 



As illustrative of the effects of such treatment upon the returns 

 and profits possible from an acre of land the following figures are 

 illuminating: 



In 1 9 10, according to the Census and Statistics Monthly, the crop 

 value per acre throughout Canada was $15.50. The cost to produce 

 this crop was about $9.60 per acre, therefore the net profit per acre was 

 almost $6.00. On the Central Experimental Farm, using the same 

 prices or values, the crop was worth $44.13 per acre produced at a cost 

 of about $12.65 per acre. This leaves a net profit of $31.48 per acre 

 for the Experimental Farm as compared with $6.00 for the average 

 farmer or over five times as great a net profit. In 1911 the difference 

 was quite as striking, while the returns for 1912 promise to be still more 

 markedly in favour of the superior cultural methods which undoubtedly 

 account for the difference. These and similar results are proving of 

 the greatest value to the farmer of this country. 



We may now proceed to say something of our investigatory work 

 with legumes. Nature's soil enrichers, the only crop that leaves the soil 

 with more nitrogen than it found in it. 



The legumes constitute that great family to which the clovers, 

 alfalfa, peas, beans and the like belong, and which alone of all farm crops 

 are able to draw for their sustenance from that vast store of free nitro- 

 gen present in the atmosphere. This they are enabled to do — not of 

 themselves, but through the agency of certain nitrogen-fixing bacteria 

 in the soil and which attach themselves and reside in nodules or tubercles 

 upon the roots of the legumes, passing on their elaborated nitrogen to 

 their host for the building up of its tissues of root, stem, and leaf. The 

 ancients knew of the value of clover as a soil enricher, but it was only in 

 1886 that Hellriegel and Wilfarth discovered the reason why. It was 

 the agricultural discovery of the century, and the practical results fol- 

 lowing from it have proved of far-reaching importance and value. 



For twenty-five years we have assiduously studied this question of 

 the use of legumes as manurial agents in all its phases — in the field and 

 orchard, in the experimental plot and in the laboratory — and we have 

 also established their place as nutritive fodders of the highest rank. 

 We have determined the amounts of nitrogen appropriated from the air 

 and stored up in the roots, stem, and foliage of a large number of these 



