APFi 10 1917 



THE OTTAWA NATURALIST. 



Vol. X. OTTAWA, MAY, 1896. No. 2. 



CHEMICAL WORK IN CANADIAN AGRICULTURE. 



By Frank T. Shutt, M.A.. F.I.C, F.C.S., Chemist, 

 Dominion Experimenlal F'arm?. 



In bringing before you an epitome of the work accom- 

 plished for Canadian agriculture by the Chemical Division of 

 the Experimental Farms during the past eight years, it may be 

 advisable by way of introduction to say something of the im- 

 portant relationship that exicts between Chemistry and Agricul- 

 ture. And in order to make this relationship clear we may first 

 consider briefly the character and scope of these two great 

 sciences. 



Chemistry busies itself with the study of the composition 

 of all matter, solid, liquid and gaseous — living and inert — and 

 endeavours to ascertain the laws that govern the changes which 

 such matter is continually undergoing in the animal, the 

 vegetable and the mineral kingdoms. Thus, chemistry has found 

 oqt the nature of plant constituents and the source whence plants 

 obtain them. It indicates the various food elements and the 

 proportions in which plants take them from the atmosphere 

 and from the soil respectively. Hence, not only soil exhaus- 

 tion and diminished yields resulting from the practice of 

 continually cropping without any concomitant return of soil 

 plant food, become easily understood with the aid of chemistry ; 

 but the way for a more or less speedy return to fertility is 

 indicated. In other words, by analysis and vegetation 

 experiment (the latter practically a synthetical method) the 



