34 THE farmer's education. 



ing to the unvarying laws of mathematics. The veterinarian 

 and entomologist have located the cause of Texas fever in a 

 parasite which the chemist has taught us how to destroy, 

 as he long since taught us how to eradicate sheep scab. The 

 physicist has learned how soils are formed, has definitely 

 classified them according to the size of their particles, and 

 discovered precisely how water behaves in the different classes. 

 This aids the farmers who understand such things to plant 

 and till crops with better judgment. The meteorologist has 

 <,iscovered the laws of storms, and learned how to gather data 

 by which he makes the forecasts whereby we save our crops. 

 He is likely, within a generation or two, to correctly foretell 

 wet and dry seasons, and thereby guide us in our planting. 

 The bacteriologist has taught us innumerable things, for 

 example, the ferments which make or mar our butter and 

 cheese, and the organisms which cause infectious diseases of 

 live stock, and, in a great measure, has put them under our 

 control. The biologist has taught us the laws of heredity, 

 and thus enabled us to work intelligently for the improvement 

 of our live stock. The physiologist has taught us the laws of 

 digestion, and enabled us to stop wasting feedstuffs. 



It is unnecessary to extend the catalogue of w^hich the 

 above is but the beginning. If we took from the farmer the 

 knowledge which pure science gave him so long ago that it 

 has become part of the inherited information of the ordinary 

 farmer, he would be lost. If we took from the progressive 

 farmer the additional information wiiich he habitually uses, 

 he would produce no more cheaply than his more ignorant 

 brother, who is growing poorer every year, he knovv^s not how. 

 When I was seventeen years old, I went one day to hire out 

 in "haying" to a hard-working farmer who was one of the 

 best men I ever knew. I found him hoeing corn, and faith- 

 fully working every inch of the soil between the rows. Many 

 of his neighbors had horse cultivators, but he said he had 

 no faith in them. The hoe was the only tool to be relied on. 

 There were many excellent men of his way of thinking in 

 those days, just as there are now many who have no faith 

 that science can aid them. The horse tool saves money to the 



