ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 247 



This, then, I believe to be the chief end of the farmer, and I 

 believe every farmer will sustain me in it: It is to so manage 

 the soil of his farm as to produce from it the largest returns in 

 food for man and beast. Is not that sufficiently broad ? Think it 

 over and see. 



What then of the soil ? It is the great reservoir of food for 

 the plant, and while formerly it was only necessary to stir it up 

 a little to cause it to give up this food, the time is coming, and 

 in many sections of this and other states west of the Alleghanies 

 has already come, when something more is necessary when the 

 reservoir has been to a large extent emptied, and the soil, in the 

 familiar terms, has become exhausted; when it can no longer 

 yield up those substances upon which plants are known to sub- 

 sist and upon which the abundance and wealth of our crops 

 wholly depend. 



In another place I took occasion to say that the maintenance 

 of the fertility of the soil is in all respects the most important 

 consideration the intelligent and progressive farmer of the 

 present day, whatever may be his location or surroundings, has 

 placed before him. No farmer, whatever be his station or his 

 education, is ignorant of the fact that each succeeding crop 

 takes something from their fertility; takes something absolutely 

 necessary to the development of the crop and leaves the soil cor- 

 respondingly less capable of producing crops of equal quantity 

 and quality in the following years. 



Among the states west of the Alleghanies it has been com- 

 mon within the recollection of men now living and probably 

 here present to see the wheat crop enormous on the virgin soil 

 begin after a few years to fall off and gradually decline from a 

 magnificent start of 30 to 40 bushels per acre to 15, 12, and 

 even 10; the quality of the product declining with the yield. 

 Ohio knew it first. Indiana experienced it. Illinois has felt the 

 importance of this fact, especially in the southern counties, and 

 even Minnesota, so celebrated for its broad and continuous 

 areas of wheat, and the high quantity and quality of the pro- 

 duct has furnished its quota of statistics to support the state- 



