Anniversary Address. 429 



All agricultural practice was, at their commencement, a 

 groping in the dark. The why ? and the wherefore ? could 

 not be given, for the application of particular manures to 

 particular crops, for the following of particular rotations of 

 cropping, nor for the draining and subsoiling of land. 

 Nothing was then really known of the specific wants of 

 plants ; of how they assimilated their nourishment ; from 

 whence they obtained the various constituents they required ; 

 why one soil was productive and another sterile ; and many 

 like things connected with plant nutrition as well as 

 animal nutrition. 



Now all this is changed. And because of the investi- 

 gations and deductions of Nature's scientists, we are 

 able to give an intelligent, and in most instances, an 

 unquestionable answer on these various matters. And 

 though, as we have already noticed, general farm practice 

 has not changed in any marked degree during the last sixty 

 years, still much information has been obtained which has 

 been found of the greatest value to profitable farming, and 

 which there can be no hesitation in saying, has mightily 

 assisted agriculture to bear up under the many reverses to 

 which it has been exposed throughout this period. 



The first great awakening to the benefit which scientific 

 research was able to confer on agriculture, may be said to 

 have been the publication, in 1840, of Leibig's "Chemistry 

 of Agriculture and Physiology." Up till this time really 

 nothing was known of the commonest principles which 

 govern animal and plant life. The theories regarding the 

 causes of fertility in soils were of the rudest and most 

 erroneous kind. It was believed that plants obtained all 

 that nourished them, solely by assimilating, directly from 

 the soil through their roots, a substance designated by 

 the name of "humus," or vegetable mould, and that soils 

 were consequently fertile or unfertile in proportion to the 

 quantity of this substance they contained. Leibig proved 

 that this " humus," in the condition in which it exists in the 

 soil.does not yield the smallest nourishment to plants; and that 

 plants are dependent for all the carbon they contain (the 

 2n 



