222 



a layer of mud and a layer of clover and another of mud and 

 another layer of clover, and turn it over and over and put 

 it on their land. There is the nitrogen from the air and 

 there is the potash and some phosphoric acid from the rich 

 mud of their canals. They raise a great deal more per acre, 

 as you know, than Ave do, not that I would advise any 

 American farmer to follow exactly the system that the 

 Chinese farmer is employing; I merely point out the princi- 

 I'le and I want to leave the thought with you that in part 

 we shall return to the principle in that we shall recognize 

 that when we add composted material to the soil, we add in 

 every thimbleful of this material many millions or billons 

 of living organisms, and this agent was discovered by the 

 practical farmer long before the day of bacteriology. 



Some of the old books on agriculture will tell you that 

 farmers in Finland and Sweden hundreds of years ago 

 recognized that when they drained an old sAvamp and used 

 lime marl on it, that in order to get that swamp under cul- 

 tivation quickly, a relatively small quantity of rich loam 

 Irom a productive field or from a garden, sprinkled on that 

 reclaimed bog or swamp land })roduced wonders. They 

 inoculated it you see when they introduced very large num- 

 bers of living organisms which constitute part of the ma- 

 chinery of the soil for transforming inert, unavailable plant 

 food ; and we recognize now-a-days that it is not the amount 

 of plant food in the soil but the rate of utilization of that 

 plant food, for the bulk of plant food is inert, is of no use to 

 tiie crops. 



I am reminded of the man who was making an automo- 

 bile trip in North Dakota in a Ford car — you need not smile, 

 this is not a Ford story — something went wrong with his 

 machine, he stopped to examine it and found there was one 

 nut loose and looking into his tool box, discovered that he 

 had left his monkey-Avrench at home. Tie did not feel safe to 

 proceed and decided that he Avould Avalk along the road a 

 Avay and see if he could ])orroAv one. After a Avhile he came 

 across a tall husky SAvede Avho spoke a broken English, and 



