6 



it. To raise paying crops to-day, without artificial fertilization, 

 is possible only where stable-manure of the best quality can be 

 offered in abundant quantities to the fields, and that possibility 

 is an exception and not the rule, least of all in a country like 

 the United States, where the area under cultivation is dispro- 

 portionately large to the number of cattle kept on it, and where, 

 moreover, the amount of stable-manure produced is, owing to 

 the mode of farming, much below the figure that might be 

 produced. 



ARTIFICIAL FERTILIZATION. 



The necessity of artificial fertilization was recognized at an 

 early day by American farmers, who were not slow in bringing 

 to their service the commercial fertilizer, a commodity as indis- 

 pensable to-day to profitable farming as food is for the sustenance 

 of the body. But, after all, commercial fertilizers are nothing 

 but food, not for the human body, it is true, but for the plant. 

 Plants require food, like animals and human beings, and it is 

 only natural that plants cannot thrive luxuriously unless they 

 are properly and well fed. 



Proper plant nutrition forms, consequently, that portion of 

 agricultural science in which the farmer' s interest centers and 

 which, also (let it be emphasized), engages the most careful and 

 diligent labor of the scientists. To solve this vexed and very 

 complex problem successfully is the aim and ambition, not of 

 one, but of all who devote their life-work and brain-energy, for 

 the benefit of the farmers, to scientific research in this direction. 

 At first sight it would seem that the solution could not be very 

 difficult, because the progress made in agricultural chemistry is 

 such that the scientist can tell exactly by analysis what each 

 plant removes from the soil, and in what quantities. Now, if 

 the analysis of the soil is compared to it, it would seem as if a 

 comparison of the two would show at a glance what the soil 

 requires, and in what quantities; but he who would act on the 

 knowledge gained by such comparison would, in many cases, 

 find out to his detriment that the conclusion so drawn was too 

 hasty and one-sided. There was a time, indeed, and that 

 time belongs to the very recent past, when even scientists held 



