THE INFLUENCE OF CHEMISTRY. 133 



to different patients, even when they have the same disease. 

 And so yon must learn to study yonr stock, you must learn 

 to study your crops, and you must learn also that meadow 

 hay is not the same from year to year. Years differ. Some 

 years there is more rain and more clouds ; other years, there 

 is more sunshine. Old formers understand that, to some 

 extent. They say, "This year the hay will spend well." 

 Well, it does spend better some years than others ; there is 

 no question about it. So you want to know when to cut 

 your hay and how to cure your hay. These substances will 

 chansfe in their relations to the stomach of the animal accord- 

 iug to the manner in which they are cured. And, therefore, 

 after you have had your tables all at your hand, you have 

 got to study these things night and day, or else you will not 

 get the best results. The time will never come, — I am glad 

 of it, — the time will never come when the farmer can sit 

 down and feel that he can work out these things mechanical- 

 ly and become a mere machine. No, he has got to become 

 a livinof, thinking man, and the time never will come when 

 a cow's stomach will become a mere laboratory. It is a liv- 

 ing thing as well as a laboratory. A distinguished man in 

 this State said to me the other day, in talking of the experi- 

 ment station, " After all, you have got to come down to 

 chemistry to learn the real value of food." I said to him, 

 " No, sir; you have got to go to the stomach of the cow. 

 There is the place where you have got to go. There is 

 the last analysis." 



I have taught chemistry a great many years ; I have 

 worked in the chemical laboratory a great man}' years ; I do 

 not profess to know as much as some of our chemists, but I 

 know enough to know that no chemical analysis will ever tell 

 us the exact value of food, under all conditions. It will 

 help us a great deal, but we want the reports of farmers, and, 

 above all, we want intelligent, educated farmers, men who 

 will sit down and Avork every day over tables harder than 

 they do in their hayfields. Give us such farmers, and we 

 shall have successful farming, and not until then. 



The Chairman. You have an idea, now, what the agricul- 

 tural experiment station is going to do. 



