SOME NEXT STEPS 179 



him and we feed him for the power he can exert, exactly as we keep 

 and feed the engine or the motor. 



There is, for want of a better term, what might be called a 

 dynamic element in agricultural science that has been too long 

 neglected. We recognize this quantitative element in function in the 

 different degrees of vitality in germinating seeds; in what is called 

 spirit or nervous energy in certain individual animals ; in what Cope 

 called growth force in individuals and in species whereby some indi- 

 viduals outdistance others and some species enjoy a constantly accel- 

 erated development, as in the evolution of the modern horse from 

 a five-toed ancestor about the size of a jack rabbit. The same phe- 

 nomenon is manifested also in the typical termination to growth by 

 which an arm or a leg stops growing at the proper point while hair 

 and skin continue to grow as long as life lasts, and regeneration of 

 injured tissues is well-nigh universal. These are important questions 

 not yet touched by our investigators. 



When physics shall have made its contribution to agricultural 

 research, we shall know more than we do now about the tension of 

 films upon soil particles as affecting drainage, irrigation, and trans- 

 location, and upon the fat globules of milk in its relation to the 

 ripening of cream and the churning of butter. We shall then be 

 enlightened about those vast and complicated transformations of 

 energy that accompany the tearing down of the structure of our foods 

 and the building up of those complicated compounds on which animal 

 and human activity depend. Then we shall no longer begin our 

 chapters on nutrition by the absurd statement that the first object of 

 feeding is to "keep up the body temperature," which is a resultant, 

 not a prerequisite of physiological activity. 



The biological sciences lie at the base of agricultural production, 

 but it is not too much to say that until a very recent date their 

 contribution has been slight outside the fields of breeding and of 

 communicable disease. 



For example, it did not help the farmer much to be told that what 

 he has all along called wheat is really Triticum satwum. He was 

 ready enough to believe it, but what earthly use could he make of 

 this strictly botanical information evolved for classification purposes? 

 It helped him but little more to be told that the berry is really a 

 fruit, tho it was news indeed because from boyhood up he had asso- 

 ciated fruits with things juicy and good to eat out of hand. And so 

 it was that "glumes" and "culms" and "inflorescence" went into 

 the intellectual scrap bag along with "plumule," "embryo," and 



