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ist working in that laboratory to some good and useful end. 

 The best and ideal farmer is, and should be, a good chemist, 

 even as he must be a good botanist, entomologist, zoologist, 

 geologist, machinist, engineer and banker. There is really no 

 profession or trade which does not find practical appliances on 

 the farm useful. In the every day work as practical chemists we 

 pick things to pieces to find what they are made of; we put 

 things together to see what they will make; we study the pro- 

 ducts to see what they are good for and how they can most 

 profitably be used — and which I shall endeavor to show good 

 farmers do every day. Yes, there is a chemistry for farmers just 

 as much as there is a chemistry for the manufacturer of iron and 

 steel, the manufacturer of starch, of glucose, of soap, analine 

 dyes, of drugs, spirits, of gas, of oil, of paints, of fertilizers. 



Manufacturers in each one of these lines employ educated 

 chemists at great expense to guide them in their work, and 

 make no move not directed from the laboratory. The science 

 is no less important to the farmer. 



And now you are beginning to inqure what is this chemistry 

 for farmers? How may farmers serve as their own chemists 

 and make their own farms their laboratories? 



It has been said that the easy way to answer a hard question 

 is to ask another equally hard. The Westminster Cate- 

 chism asks first: "What is the chief end of man?" I shall 

 ask what is the chief end of a farmer? I know some cynic is 

 swearing to himself, and possibly to his neighbor, to follow the 

 advice of the quaker father to his son, " Get money, honestly it 

 thee can; but get money." Perhaps that's so in a measure, but 

 the farmer is by no means alone in that. He isn't farming 

 wholly for fun any more than a lawyer is looking for fun when he 

 loafs around a court house a couple of weeks at a time waiting 

 for his solitary case to come up after various and sundry post- 

 ponements. Making money may be the ultimate chief end of 

 the farmer, but there are several important means which lead 

 to this end in which the application of this great science of 

 chemistry are involved. 



