CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Agricultural industry is undergoing in these opening 

 years of the Twentieth century a most wonderful develop- 

 ment in the direction of that perfection of method and 

 practical application of scientific principles which has been 

 the hope and inspiration of thoughtful students of agri- 

 culture through ages. 



That which is being wrought out by workers, by stu- 

 dents, by thinkers, by investigators in all branches of ag- 

 riculture in plant breeding, in domestic animal industry, 

 in crop diversification, in planting, and harvesting, and 

 marketing goes directly to the final solution of the essen- 

 tial problems connected with production. 



Farming methods of the past century were those of 

 preceding years; the methods of our century are to be 

 those of the next thousand years. 



This does not mean that our forefathers did not know 

 anything about farming, nor that what they did was all 

 wrong, nor that they failed to solve the problems of their 

 day and age. It does not mean we are on the verge of 

 revolution and are about to overturn old methods and 

 adopt entirely new ones all round. But with the more 

 varied needs of mankind as civilization becomes more 

 complicated, and the proportionate narrowing of our fields 

 as we approach the limit of tillable area, the new and com- 

 plicated problems are to be met only by the putting to- 

 gether of many heads and the accumulation of much 



