210 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



try. I was in Washington a week or two ago and met 

 Professor Scribner, who concerns himself with these crops, 

 and he told me that he considered this one of the most valua- 

 ble introductions of recent times. He went further, and, 

 after emphasizing it as a forage crop, said he believed it was 

 going to prove to be an immensely valuable food product 

 for the human family. The soy bean is absolutely, without 

 any exception, the richest known vegetable product. It is 

 almost as rich as meat. It contains no less than 36 to 40 

 per cent of the flesh formers, and 18 to 20 per cent of fat. 

 No doubt we will learn to use it. I do not eat it, but I 

 know it is capable of being made into a palatable and ex- 

 cellent food. The Japanese, among whom I found it, do 

 eat it. You will be amused at one way in which I was in- 

 troduced into its use. I attended a wrestling match, — it is 

 a great national sport in Japan, — and I was shocked to see 

 people around with beans on the vines, eating them appar- 

 ently with great relish, I said to myself, " What can these 

 people be made of to be eating raw beans in this way." I 

 learned afterwards that they had been boiled in the pod. 

 A delicious and nutritious sauce is made from these beans, 

 from which the name " soy " originated. Let me restate : I 

 believe the soy bean has a future as a forage crop and also 

 as a human food. 



Concerning the necessity of having the little ' ' bugs " 

 which cause the growth of nodules on the roots, I would 

 ask you to look at the photographs which you will find on 

 the table in the rear of the hall, showing the growth with 

 and without the nodules. The speaker says you must send 

 away and get the seeds with which to inoculate your field 

 on which you plant the soy bean. That may be the case, 

 but it is not absolutely necessary. It may not have many 

 nodules the first year, but the next year plant it in the same 

 field or one adjoining and you will have more, and the next 

 year repeat, and you will have yet more ; and after a while 

 you will have the germs all through the soil, just as you 

 have an abundance of the nodules on the clover. I brought 

 the first seed of the soy bean from Japan. I had only a 

 little, — half a pint or so. I did not know anything about 

 these nodules and the bacteria which cause them. It was 



