AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE EXPERIMENTS. 73 



I come now to the matter of the experiments at the College, 

 and I will give you some of the reasons why those experi- 

 ments were instituted. In the first place, they were instituted, 

 as a matter of course, because we wanted to learn something, 

 and because we wanted to learn something about a matter 

 of which practical men, whatever were their opinions or their 

 ideas, knew really but very little ; and, so far as that matter 

 was concerned, scientific men knew practically nothing. That 

 was the first reason. The next reason was, we had gathered 

 together a large company of young men (students), and we 

 wanted to train them in relation to their powers of observa- 

 tion ; we wanted to teach them to experiment ; we wanted 

 them to participate in the experiments that were being carried 

 on ; and, if anything was learned, to go away and scatter that 

 information broadcast, and put it into practice where they 

 should locate. Another reason, coming home to these farmers 

 of the State, was this : the circumstances of our agriculture are 

 such, with this dense population gathered all around our farms, 

 engaged in other pursuits than agriculture — pursuits that make 

 no food, and looking to the farmers for supplies for their daily 

 sustenance, bringing almost at their doors a good remunera- 

 tive price (although farmers are grumbling all the time) — I 

 say, the circumstances are such, that the tendency is to take 

 the crops from the farm in their crude state and sell them, 

 leaving very little material on the farm, which, in the form of 

 the refuse of those crops and what we call barnyard manure, 

 can be put back on the land as food for succeeding crops. 

 The consequence is, that there is a sliding-down scale in the 

 fertility of our farms; and you know, brother farmers, that 

 all through the Commonwealth a large per cent, of our farms 

 have got well down. Now, then, it seemed to be important that 

 we should find some material to take the place of the exported 

 materials from the farm, which would make food for crops. 

 We can buy stable and barnyard manure in our cities, towns 

 and villages, and in that way get some of the material back 

 upon our soil ; but we can get but little in proportion to what 

 we want, and when we get it, it costs us generally more than 

 it is worth. Manure of the best quality, that we get in our 

 stables, costs from fourteen to eighteen dollars a cord on the 

 land, and that is more than any farmer engaged in general 

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