October 21, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



539 



paper, namely, that we have a problem of 

 soil sanitation which is far greater in its 

 bearings upon the world's food supply and 

 upon the principles of cereal cropping than 

 any of the most enthusiastic plant pathol- 

 ogists or any of the most able agronomists 

 have ever anticipated. If I am right in the 

 conclusions which I have here set forth, 

 then we have a doctrine of hope for cereal 

 agriculture rather than one of despair. I 

 have outlined causes which account for 

 many of the anomalies in the best con- 

 ducted experiments in crop rotation and 

 soil fertilization, and have indicated bear- 

 ings and influences which are now more 

 easily understood. 



If into your schooli'oom, with its many 

 children, there should come a patient af- 

 flicted with infantile paralysis, or one with 

 diphtheria, or one with small-pox, each of 

 you would be thoroughly frightened. You 

 may not have seen anything, but you have 

 learned to believe the doctor when he says 

 that the symptoms exhibited by these pa- 

 tients are characteristic of infectious 

 troubles and you say to the health officer, 

 "This building must be closed and disin- 

 fected." Why? Because you know, if 

 you do not do so, that, however healthy and 

 strong the children sent there may be, there 

 will be some who suffer great misery ; some 

 that are marked for life, some that are 

 paralyzed and not a few who die. 



So it is with cereal cropping. Large 

 areas of the world's wheat fields are not 

 depleted chemically, but rather contami- 

 nated with many of the diseases that wheat 

 is heir to, and a number of these diseases 

 are transmissible in nearly related crops. 

 In saying this I am placing before j"ou an 

 argument for crop rotation which any one 

 of you can understand and such as any 

 farmer can understand without the dis- 

 couraging thought that he has, because of 

 his ignorance, in a few short years, in some 



cases one, two or three, destroyed his land 

 by the removal of chemical elements. We 

 all believe in crop rotation. Here is one of 

 the reasons why it succeeds and a clear 

 explanation why a properly planned series 

 may fail. We believe in the conserving of 

 fertility of the soil by the application of 

 manure, and herein we have a clear ex- 

 planation of the reasons why the applica- 

 tion of manures sometimes is thoroughly 

 destructive, and why under certain condi- 

 tions it need not be destructive, why it 

 is, for instance, that the processes of com- 

 posting and the use of liquid manures by 

 old-time gardeners and farmers do not 

 go out of existence, regardless of the 

 theories of those who wish to sell the ma- 

 nure spreader. 



I am not an enemy of the manure 

 spreader. It is a great labor-saving device, 

 but I wish to say that unless it is used more 

 intelligently than has usually been advo- 

 cated in the northwest it may be placed as 

 one of the most destructive agents now in 

 use in cereal cropping through weed seed 

 and disease dissemination. The manure 

 spreader would still be a useful instru- 

 ment if proper types of manure were 

 spread on the right crop. We are all be- 

 lievers that heavy weight seed is more ef- 

 fective in crop production than light 

 weight seed of the same pedigree. That 

 has been pretty hard for one who believes 

 in pedigree to understand; for the small 

 amount of food which a parent seed can 

 give the young plant, in most cases, is 

 merely a start in the world. Here is the 

 real explanation of the fact. 



Those of us who have been directly in- 

 terested in the disinfection of cereal grains 

 for planting purposes have long since be- 

 come convinced that proper seed disinfec- 

 tion greatly enhances the crop yield, even 

 though the seed be number one, hard in 

 quality, and though there be no smut 



