138 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



that the largest asset of the priests of agriculture is their igno- 

 rance. Fifty years ago we began to import German science, 

 and, with a due respect for a foreign product and because we 

 didn't know any better, we accepted it all without modification 

 or even adulteration as applicable to the agriculture of this new 

 and rapidly developing nation. Some of us elder brethren 

 remember with what confidence we advised the farmer as to 

 rations for plants and animals, for had not the Herr Doctor 

 Namenlos worked it all out and was he not authority? But 

 since those days we have become one of the great powers and we 

 now have a right to some things of our own, even our ignorance. 

 We are seeing with greater distinctness every year that the 

 more complex and more important problems of agriculture are 

 still unsolved, and that because of this our utterances to the 

 practical man are still lame and halting. Do you doubt this 

 statement and ask what these problems are ? Who of us is able 

 to stand on his feet and define fertility, or even demonstrate the 

 relative value of its various factors? Do we not often quail 

 before the simple and direct questions of the farmer when he 

 seeks information as to the production of crops and sometimes 

 return him answers bedecked with glittering generalities ? We 

 say much, and not too much, about the wonderful value of the 

 legumes. Clover and alfalfa have been the most valuable asset 

 of the institute speaker and yet we are in profound ignorance as 

 to how much nitrogen they take from the atmosphere when they 

 are grown under the ordinary conditions of farm practice. Once 

 we had the German standard rations for farm animals and our 

 ex-cathedra formulae were convenient and much admired. Now 

 we have practically lost these standards in the misty mazes of 

 new data and nutrition problems still harass our minds. Con- 

 trol of results in the breeding of plants and animals is still an 

 unsolved riddle. (This statement should be made, I suppose, 

 with an apology to the mathematical formulae of the disciples 

 of Mendel.) Tuberculosis in farm animals is an unconquered 



