74 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



farming can afford to pay. He may possibly afford to pay that 

 price to grow tobacco at thirty cents a pound, or some of the 

 special crops of market-gardening ; but, in general farming, 

 we cannot afford to pay that price, and, therefore, we must 

 look further. That was one reason why we tried these ex- 

 periments, to see if we could not find something that would 

 make crops grow, strange as it may seem, without the use of 

 barnyard manure. * 



The next thing was this : science has really made some 

 wonderful discoveries within the last few years, and it seemed 

 that the time had come when some of those discoveries should 

 be made practical to the men on the farms who were growing 

 crops. Chemistry, for instance, had shown us absolutely 

 what our plants were made of, and that the composition of 

 our plants was not an accident, it was not a chance, but was 

 from design, by the All- wise, and that the composition of 

 plants never changes, never varies. The composition of 

 wheat, for instance, to-day, was the composition of wheat a 

 hundred years ago, and it will be the composition of wheat a 

 hundred years hence, or else wheat will not answer the pur- 

 pose for which the Almighty designed it. The composition 

 of plants which the chemist has taught us, is an absolute, un- 

 changeable fact, and we can rely upon it. But the chemist 

 has gone further, and has proved to us not only what plants 

 are made of, but that while thay are made of different mate- 

 rials, which are always there, these different materials are 

 in very unequal proportions. Some of those materials are 

 always put in the wheat plant in large proportions, others in 

 small proportions ; but these proportions are absolutely the 

 same, — yesterday, to-day, and forever. Now, if there is a 

 scientific man here, I do not know but that he will say, "I 

 don't know about that." But I make the statement again, 

 that in mature, well-ripened plants, the proportion of the 

 different elements is invariably the same, as far as practice is 

 concerned. The chemist may find a difference of a two-hun- 

 dredth of one per cent, or a five-hundredth of one per cent, 

 in the different analyses ; but perhaps it is his own fault, 

 because he did not find how much water there was in it. But, 

 practically, for you and I, in tilling the land and feeding the 

 plants, I say that the chemists have taught us what plants are 



