SECTION F AGRICULTURE 



(Hall 10, September 24, 3 p. m.) 



CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR H. J. WHEELER, Rhode Island Agricultural College. 

 SPEAKERS: PRESIDENT CHARLES W. DABNEY, University of Cincinnati. 



PROFESSOR LIBERTY H. BAILEY, Cornell University. 

 SECRETARY: PROFESSOR WILLIAM HILL, University of Chicago. 



THE RELATIONS OF AGRICULTURE TO OTHER SCIENCES 



BY CHARLES WILLIAM DABNEY 



[Charles William Dabney, President, University of Cincinnati, b. June 19, 1855, 

 Hampden Sidney, Virginia. A.B. Hampden Sidney College, 1873; Ph.D. Got- 

 tingen; LL.D. Yale and Johns Hopkins, 1901; Post-graduate, University of 

 Virginia, Berlin, and Gottingen. State Chemist and Director of Experiment 

 Station, North Carolina; Professor of Agricultural Chemistry and Director of 

 Experiment Station, University of Tennessee, 1887-90; President, University 

 of Tennessee, 1887-1904; Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, 1894-97; President 

 Summer School of South. Member of Washington Academy of Science; 

 Southern Education Board ; American Institute of Social Science; Fellow of 

 American Association for the Advancement of Science, etc. Author of scientific 

 and educational papers in periodicals and pamphlets and addresses on educa- 

 tional subjects.] 



THE subject assigned me is Agriculture in Relation to Science. 

 For this subject, almost cosmical in its vastness, I offer no apology, 

 but ask your indulgence while I attempt to point out a few of the 

 achievements of the new agriculture and to show their relation 

 to the advancement of civilization. While the progress has con- 

 sisted partly- in opening up such lands as are not highly cultivated 

 to people who can cultivate them, its chief progress has been in 

 the improvement of man's methods of cultivating the soil and of 

 using plants and animals to support his ever-increasing numbers. 

 Since population is increasing rapidly and more food is required 

 each year to support the life of the people born into the world, 

 unless the production of food becomes greater in proportion to the 

 unit man and the unit acre, starvation awaits the race. In 1899 

 Sir William Crookes argued seriously, before a meeting of the 

 British Association, that the world's wheat-supply is already threat- 

 ened by the failing fertility of the available soil. As the low aver- 

 age of less than thirteen bushels per acre means starvation for the 

 rapidly increasing population of wheat-eaters, when he found the 

 limit of available wheat-lands nearly reached, he saw no hope for 

 the race except by increasing the fertility of the soil. 



Man has, however, shown a wonderful ability to utilize the different 



