60 THE STATE AS FARMER 



above careful and complete farming will have 

 disclosed the various places which need one 

 or other of them. Nitrogen, potash, and 

 phosphorus are those plant-foods which are 

 sometimes, indeed often, lacking on our 

 farms. The feeding of the stock by outside 

 articles, such as oilcake, will effect the needed 

 addition to some extent. But for many 

 years now there have been used in a rough- 

 and-ready way fertilisers which put into 

 the soil the chemical constituents required. 

 And it needs little imagination to picture 

 the commercial world let loose upon the 

 farming fraternity with their feeding stuffs 

 and fertilisers. The farmer is no match for 

 his opponent, and he succumbs in two ways. 

 He applies the wrong foods and fertilisers 

 at the wrong prices, and, nature having no 

 pity upon ignorance, he fails in his results, 

 and either goes down altogether or gives the 

 whole system a bad name and parts with 

 it for ever — unless, indeed, some new panacea 

 comes along. 



There is only one safeguard from this 

 disastrous routine — science and more science 

 carefully applied by method and under a 



