' 36 50ME THINGS APPLIED SCIENCE HAS DONE 
FOR THE FARMER 
Have you ever thought of what the wheat and corn 
raised in the western part of this continent represents ? 
Why, the value of one year’s crop is greater than all the 
gold mined in the Klondike from the beginning until now. 
Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan can raise from 
So to 130,000,000 of bushels of No. 1 hard wheat, which, 
at 69 cents, means $78,000,000. The yearly total of the 
Klondike never exceeded $10,000,000. 
Tet me conclude this fragmentary story of a portion of 
what applied science has done for the farm by expressing a 
~ strong hope that this Dominion of ours will be found in the 
forefront in this matter, and soon that in every Province 
there will be, not only an Experimental Farm, but in con- 
nection therewith a thoroughly equipped college PE 
endowed with money and land. 
There is danger that our great wheat lands of the 
North-west may be thought to be, as they are often spoken © 
of as being, practically inexhaustible. It is not so, and it 
would be well if we had the machinery ready to meet the 
condition likely to arise when a few more crops of wheat 
have been taken out of our great prairie and the other 
lands of our great heritage. 
Look at California, which years ago could raise forty 
and fifty bushels of wheat an acre. In later years her 
average dropped to twenty and less. So with many cther 
places that I could name. What is the explanation? Oh, 
sick fields. Science at once set about finding what made 
them sick. What did exhaustion of the soil mean? Time 
will not permit to explain the process of curing those sick 
fields. Suffice it to say that science found a way of 
:. restoring to the soil what it had lost. 
These are the sick fields that made the farmers ‘of the 
New England, a generation ago, abandon their farms 
and steer for the West, and now, when we think of what 
man has accomplished by careful research, first in the lab- 
