THE FOOD QUESTION. 81 



around the world at a fraction of its value, and live beasts are 

 carried five tliousand miles on their own hoofs. In the modern 

 steamer the little cube of coal, which weighs one ounce and 

 which will pass through the circumference of a quarter of a dol- 

 lar, will drive a ton of wheat and its proportion of the steamer 

 two miles. Compare this economy of the force of fuel with the 

 waste of coal in our cooking stoves and ranges, and you may get* 

 some idea of the margin for economy in the household applica- 

 tions of science. 



Again, no man yet knows the potential of a single acre of 

 land anywhere, in respect to its possible production of food. We 

 may perhaps say that it must 3'et be quite impossible for a single 

 aci'e to sustain more than a given number of persons ; but who can 

 say what that given number of persons really is? And who can 

 say how far the next discovery in the application of science to the 

 use of land may increase that number — whatever it now is. 



One of the most interesting developments of this subject was 

 conducted by the lat5 Farish Furman of Georgia, a son-in-law, I 

 believe, of Professor Le Conte, the chemist. 



After the war ended, being reduced to poverty, he first tried, 

 the law ; then he entered into politics, but becoming dissatisfied 

 with both, he went back to the worn-out soil of an old Georgia 

 plantation. 



At the time when he undertook to get his living out of this land 

 it would produce only one-eighth of a bale of cotton to an acre, — a 

 crop which would not pay the cost. He did not, I believe, at first 

 study the chemistrj' of the soil, but he studied the chemistry of the 

 cotton plant ; and he theorized a compost which, being put into 

 the laboratory of the soil, would, he believed, increase the yield 

 of cotton. 



He then looked around for the cheapest materials of which his 

 theoretic compost might be practically made. He found them in 

 the waste of the neighboring woods, in Stassfurt potash, in the 

 phosphate beds of South Carolina, and in other materials available 

 at moderate cost. 



He measured the quantities needed and the price ; and he applied 

 this compost year by year to the worn-out soil of his paternal 

 acres, until he achieved a crop of two bales of lint cotton to an 

 acre ; and thereby made himself a man of independent means. 

 What had the original fertility of the soil to do with this ? He 

 was a loss to the cotton country when he died. 

 6 



