12 



even more important than the other, was that the proportions and 

 quantities of the ingredients taken up by the crop are so variable and 

 so different under differing circumstances that nothing less than a 

 careful and scientific study of soils 'will enable one to restore those 

 ingredients in the most efficient and economical proportions. It was 

 accordingly held that for the encouragement of such studies, schools 

 of .agriculture must be multiplied. 



And from that day to this the number as well as the efficiency of 

 the schools has steadily increased. Prussia alone has four higher 

 agricultural colleges with some eighty professorships ; she has more 

 than forty lesser schools, all having model farms ; she has five spe- 

 cia.l schools for the cultivation of meadows and the scientific study of 

 methods of irrigation ; she has one special school for the teaching of 

 those who desire to reclaim swamp lands ; she has two special schools 

 for teaching the growing of fruit trees in industrial nurseries ; she has 

 a school for teaching horse-shoeing ; one for teaching silk raising ; one 

 for the raising of bees ; and one for teaching the cultivating of fish. 

 Besides all these she. has twenty special schools for the education of 

 gardeners ; and fifteen schools for the training of those who are to 

 cultivate the grape. 



The example of Prussia has been imitated by the other German 

 states. The little Kingdom of Bavaria, scarcely larger than Massa- 

 chusetts, has twenty-six agricultural colleges, besides more than two 

 hundred agricultural associations. Wurtemberg, still smaller in 

 area, has sixteen colleges, and seventy-six associations. Baden, 

 with a population of only a million, has fourteen agricultural col- 

 leges besides four schools of gardening and forestry. Saxony, with 

 its dense population of two millions compacted into a space hardly 

 larger than two American counties, has four higher colleges and 

 twenty agricultural schools besides a veterinary college, and a de- 

 partment of agriculture of twenty professors at the University of 

 Leipsic. Saxe Weimar, with a population of no more than 230,000 

 souls has three agricultural colleges besides an agricultural depart- 

 ment with fifteen professorships at the University of Jena. 



And what has been the result? Simply this, that while in every 

 one of the American states, as is shown by the agricultural reports, 

 the average crop per acre has been steadily growing less and less,* 



^Authority for this statement may be found in the Report of the Commission of Agri- 

 culture for the year 1886, p. 19. It is there shown that the average yield of the leading 

 cereals, between 1870 and 1879 was considerably greater than that from 1879 to 1885. The 

 diminution is shown by the following ligures : The average corn crop declined from 26.8 

 to 25.1 bushels per acre; Wheat, from 12.5 to 12.1 ; Oats, from 27.5 to 27.2; Rye, from 14.2 to 

 12.8; Barley, from 22.4 to 22.08; and Buckwheat, from 17.5 to 13.6. 



