ioo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



HOW SCIENCE IS HELPING THE FARMER 



By CHAELES S. PLUMB, B. S., 



DIRECTOR INDIANA AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



A SCORE or more years ago, when Horace Greeley and Henry 

 Ward Beecher were telling the American public what they 

 knew about farming, there was quite a general tendency on the 

 part of the agricultural class to hold up to ridicule what was 

 termed " scientific farming/' Great claims were then made as to 

 the importance of a knowledge of science, so that the farmer 

 might analyze the soil, crops, fertilizers, etc. Especial stress was 

 laid upon having a knowledge of chemistry, in order to be able to 

 analyze something. Chemistry was to be the panacea for all the 

 farmer's ills, and writers indiscriminately quoted Liebig, Boussin- 

 gault, Johnston, Lawes, and Gilbert, and other famous agricul- 

 tural chemists. There was much book farming done that was a 

 source of amusement for practical agriculturists. Much of the 

 written matter and advice published was worthless, and time and 

 the labors of science conclusively demonstrated as much. Early 

 investigators, engaged in faithful and hard work, gleaned much 

 information of scientific importance, and eventually overturned 

 numerous theories that had hitherto seemed plausible. Chief 

 among these was the analysis of soils, whereby one could know 

 the composition of his soil and at once determine in what ingredi- 

 ents of plant food it was deficient, so that he might feed back to 

 it the lacking elements. Time and study have shown that soil is 

 a very complex substance, and one analysis is usually quite un- 

 satisfactory, because a little sample of soil represents only a small 

 piece of ground, perhaps representing quite unfairly the entire 

 field. Consequently, as remarked by Dr. Caldwell,* soil analyses 

 are not thoroughly practical, on account of the difficulty in secur- 

 ing a sample of a few pounds that shall correctly represent the 

 millions of pounds of soil in even a single acre, to say nothing of 

 a field of many acres. 



Fifty years ago Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, through 

 an interest in rural economy which resulted in far-reaching dis- 

 coveries, established himself as the father of agricultural chem- 

 istry. His investigations largely related to the composition of 

 the soil and plant nutrition. He was the first to prove that plants 

 fed on certain ingredients of the soil, and that different classes of 

 soils and plants varied in their composition. Liebig's was the 

 pioneer work, and from his time to the present a mass of scientific 

 information has been gradually accumulating that in numerous 

 ways is serving a good purpose. 



* Agricultural Science, vol. i, p. 25. 



