CAMPBELL'S SOIL CULTURE MANUAL 309 



account of his efforts to remedy the defects in his early edu- 

 cation that so seriously hampered him in the prosecution 

 o a strictly scientific investigation along original lines. 

 Many of the things that he had to learn by patient experi- 

 ment would have been taught him by the schools, or could 

 have been reasoned out had he been thoroughly grounded 

 at the start in scientific methods. Perhaps, however- '* 

 his idea had been conventionalized by too much of the sci- 

 ence of college curricula he might have accepted the dictum 

 that the reclamation of the semi-arid lands was impossible, 

 and the Campbell system would never have been born. 



After giving much more of the detail history of the 

 years of labor which resulted in the development of the 

 system Mr. Cowan continued: 



Some have gone so far as to assert that most of the 

 methods taught by Mr. Campbell were advocated by Jethro 

 Tull, a hundred and twenty-five years ago. Inasmuch as 

 Jethro Tull never visited America and .probably never heard 

 of the American plains, it would be remarkable indeed if 

 he had devised a system of agricultural procedure suited 

 to conditions there. 



It is, of course, true that many of the facts of the Camp- 

 bell system were known long before Mr. Campbell's time. 

 Some of the methods used are applicable to farming the 

 whole world over, and have been practiced for generations. 

 Some of the processes have been worked out under the 

 pressure of necessity by hundreds, or perhaps, thousands, 

 of farmers on the plains. If Campbell had done no more 

 than collect, organize and classify these disconnected facts 

 and methods into a coherrent system of practice adapted to 

 conditions in the semi-arid belt, he would have accom- 

 plished a work of the very highest utility. 



"He has done much more than that. He has adopted 



