10 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



where only these are present. The coming of the chemical fer- 

 tilizers, in the United States most noticeably, meant the going 

 of fertility. The fertility disappeared gradually ; it hung on 

 until the last vestige of the forest leaves upon which the pio- 

 neers raised their great crops, and the animal waste from the 

 cow yard, the hog pen and the chicken house, with which our 

 grandfathers kept up the humus content or vegetable matter of 

 the soil, had all disappeared by decay, by plant utilization and 

 by washing and blowing away. Then crops began to drop. 

 New Englanders and Xew Yorkers gave up their homes arid 

 went into the west, where the land was new, where the cleared 

 forest land was filled with the leaves that had fallen for count- 

 less ages, or where the prairie was feet deep in humus made 

 up of the grasses which had been laid low by countless winters. 

 As this humus began to run low, and crops in consequence 

 decreased, much money and great physical effort was ex- 

 pended to bring it back by the use of chemicals alone. This 

 failed, and a pilgrimage to the " new lands " further Avest 

 began. This happened in spite of all that man had learned 

 through the writings of Mago, the first agricultural maker of 

 books, who wrote seven hundred years before Christ ; in spite 

 of Columella, whose books, written fifty-five years after the 

 birth of Christ, still exist. Each nation apparently is forced 

 to learn in that very potent but very painful school of learn- 

 ing, — experience. The foreigner comes to our shores lacking 

 knowledge of our language, of our climate, of our ways and of 

 our likes and dislikes. He buys a piece of land in ITew Eng- 

 land or in ISTew York State, paying with alacrity the abnor- 

 mally high price asked him because he is a foreigner, settling- 

 down with little or no capital after his land is paid for, living 

 a life of hardship for one or at the most two years, and then 

 builds a comfortable house, makes his dooryard a thing of 

 beauty with flowers and shrubs, wins prizes at the local fair, 

 and becomes a prominent citizen ; while his neighbors sit 

 around and sneeringly refer to his methods as bound to fail, 

 because he has pinned his faith to manure and used little or 

 no chemical fertilizer. Yet thev do not see that in dodii'ine: 

 weeds which come with manure, in dodging the dirt and diffi- 

 culty in handling it, they are gradually bringing their lands 



