PART III 



NORTH AMERICAN FIELD CROPS 



Having now obtained a general view of some of the primary considerations involved in the 

 growing and handling of all crops, we may proceed to specific discussions of the different kinds of 

 crops. In this work we are to confine ourselves to field crops, or those that are considered to be 

 a part of general farm practice. In doing so, we distinguish these crops from the horticultural crops. 

 This distinction is customary rather than logical ; but it has special justification in this instance 

 because the horticultural crops are treated in the Editor's Cyclopedia of American Horticulture. 

 Certain of the horticultural crop groups are grown under general field conditions, however ; and in 

 order to give the present work some further degree of completeness, particularly with reference to 

 farm management questions, comprehensive articles are inserted on Fruit-growing, Nurseries and 

 Truck-growing. 



Agronomy. 



The classification of agricultural ideas has gone farther in the colleges of agriculture than 

 elsewhere. The curriculum of the modern college presents such a dividing of the subject as would 

 have been considered impossible a quarter-century ago. This dividing of the field and rearranging 

 of the groups will proceed. The old professorship of agriculture is breaking up into component or 

 separable parts, each part in charge of a specialist. One of these parts is agronomy. This is a 

 new word to common speech. Its literal equivalent is " the law of the fields." The group of subjects 

 comprised in agronomy is not yet clearly defined, nor is the group homogeneous. Animal husbandry, 

 dairy industry, agricultural engineering and machinery are distinguished from it. It signifies, prac- 

 tically, field crops and their management. Horticulture and forestry are also distinguished, for 

 practical rather than for rational reasons. It comprises all such questions as crop management, 

 rotations and the cultivation of field crops. This Volume II is practically a treatise on agronomy, 

 together with some questions of technology (in Part II) that properly lie outside its scope. 



Phytoieehny. 



All knowledge, practice and industries concerned in the raising of animals have been included, 

 in recent discussions, under the one word zootechny (from two Greek words meaning animal and 

 art or handicraft). Similarly, the knowledge, practice and industries concerned in the growing of 

 plants have very recently been designated by the new word phytotechny (j)kyton, Greek for plant). 

 This word is practically equivalent to the phrase "Plant Industry," as applied to a bureau in the 

 United States Department of Agriculture. It includes agronomy, horticulture, forestry, and any 

 other knowledge directly associated with the rearing of plants. 



Crop-growing advice. 



Perhaps no agricultural writing needs to be more carefully read than that giving advice on the 

 growing of the different crops. In the first place, the reader must recognize the fact that bits of 

 advice which are so small and apparently unimportant as to be overlooked may be the very ones that 

 determine success or failure in a given crop. Yet, in the second place, too much blind reliance on 

 these very points may be disastrous in certain years or under peculiar conditions. The reader, if 

 he intends practicing what he reads, must have some groundwork or background of experience or 

 reason, whereby he is to test all things. Again, allowance must always be made for the local color of 

 the writing. Farming is a local business. One's experience is usually acquired in one locality, or in 

 localities that are similar : he is likely to have this locality chiefly in mind in his writing. Still 



(191) 



