10 



Had this been grown in the light of the knowledge possessed by 

 almost every tiller of the soil of the present day, conditions would not 

 have reached so serious a state as to excite alarm. The more pro- 

 gressive farmers knew no better way to clean the land than by bare 

 following. The yard manure was not considered fit to apply until 

 it had rotted down to a black, mushy condition, and then it was not 

 infrequently applied at an extraordinary rate per acre and this almost 

 entirely to the hoed crop. In the light of the present day much 

 time was wasted in ploughing deeply to the loss of much valuable fer- 



The Director's residence from the north, 1891. 



tility. The value of surface tillage to conserve moisture was not 

 understood and in dry years the losses were enormous. The gospel 

 of clover growing for the land's sake was not yet accepted by the 

 rank and file who looked upon it as too valuable food to plow under. 

 To speak of bacteria in the soil was to court ridicule and bring derision 

 upon a "book farmer." Here and there a staunch Old-Countryman 

 observed in a more or less intelligent way a system of crop rotation, 

 but few even of these men understood, as most farmers do now, the 

 true underlying principles of a successful system. Practically no one 

 ploughed a clover sod in those days, but land was left in grass until the 

 native sorts had driven the cultivated varieties from the field. To 



