166 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



NITROGEN IN RELATION TO SOIL FERTILITY. 



BY I)l{. CHAS. 1). WOODS, ORONO, ME. 



We sometimes think of the practical farmer as a very con- 

 servative man, and yet it is only a a;eneration since Stock- 

 bridge, Johnson, Goessmann, Atwater and others began to 

 write and teach some of the then very new things that foreign, 

 and particularly German, scientific men were finding out rela- 

 tive to the chemistry of plant nutrition. Many of the found- 

 ers of the agricultural colleges are still living, and it is only 

 thirty years since the first agricultural experiment station 

 in America began its work. And what a change has been 

 wrought in farm practice and theory ! 



In the progress which has been made in all these years, 

 the farmer has become so familiar with the chemistry of fer- 

 tilizers and cattle foods, the demands of plants and the feed- 

 ing standards for animals, that it has come aljout that many 

 are using this chemical knowledge as though it were exact, 

 and as though plant growing and cattle feeding were largely 

 questions of arithmetic. For several years research has 

 been going on along other, and in some ways more impor- 

 tant, lines than chemistry ; with the result that to-day, in a 

 way, the fiirmer in his practice and his reasonings is as far 

 separated from the advances of science as he was years ago, 

 when the scientific men who first did so much for the 

 agritailture of New England were advancing the chemical 

 theories. It is of course for such purposes that you have 

 established the agricultural experiment stations, and you 

 demand that they shall constantly l)e working out into the 

 new and unknown : l)lazing trails which shall later become 

 highways for the followers of practical agriculture. I am 



