PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 183 



out soil we have no crops, without crops we have no farmers, and 

 without farmers we have nothing. 



It was in 1891 that Winogradski and Warren simultaneously, the one 

 in England and the other on the Continent, discovered this little micro- 

 organism, discovered just what its mission was, discovered that the God 

 of the Universe had placed in the soil a wonderful little creature whose 

 mission it was to take back the nitrogen from the atmosphere and store 

 it up in the soil that we might continue the processes forever and 

 forever of the growing of crops and the feeding of animals, the one 

 interdependent on the other. It was, I say, only in 1891 that they 

 found this. Liebig and other great scientists wrote years ago that 

 the time was near when the nitrate supplies of the earth would be 

 exhausted ; that because of the tremendous evils that follow our methods 

 of cultivation the earth would be wasted, the nitrogen of the earth 

 would be washed out and lost, and that all of the sources of nitrates 

 in Chile and elsewhere would be exhausted and man would die because 

 fertilizers could not be found anywhere to continue the growth of plants 

 on which he lived ; and it was when they found this little micro-organism 

 that they appreciated the fact that Nature did not leave out a link in 

 the cycle of life. I say the mission of these little bacteria is just this. 

 Plant life decays, plant life is growing ; animal life lives upon it, animal 

 life dies, decomposition comes in. Bacteria, through their activity, 

 decompose them. The nitrogen that is in the plant, the nitrogen that 

 is in the animal, goes off again into the atmosphere; and right there 

 comes in the bacteria, working in the leguminous plants and inde- 

 pendent of them, also, and lays hold of the free nitrogen, carries it back 

 into the soil, there again to begin the cycle that it went through for 

 millions and millions of years— eons upon eons of time. God, in his 

 great wisdom and power, has not left us helpless, then, but has provided 

 us a means to get that which we need for the life of the soil. 



This humus has a great mission to perform. It is physical life — 

 it gives physical life to the soil. You and I can not do our work 

 properly, can not do it well, can not do it happily, unless we are 

 physically strong. No matter how powerful the intellect of man may 

 be, if that powerful intellect is in a tiny, sickly body it is unable to do 

 the great work which the Creator intended it should do ; and therefore 

 it becomes the duty of man everywhere to preserve this tabernacle of 

 bis soul that it may enable him to do the work given him by God, for 

 himself and his fellows on the earth. It is true also of the soil ; it must 

 be kept physically well. 



We, in this building and in our homes, need fresh air. We open the 

 windows and the doors that the air may freely circulate and that we 

 may have the oxygen to breathe into our lungs. It would be very bad 

 for us if we closed down the windows and closed the doors and breathed 



