126 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Station to ask for further information as 
to the cause of their once prolific fields 
failing to bring forth their usual yield 
of the precious grain; and once more 
Squanto came to their rescue and proved 
equal to the occasion after hearing their 
story. He held another Practical Insti¬ 
tute, showing them that though they put 
an extra quantity of fish in the hill for 
the corn, and though they still had fine 
stalks but no corn, that the land was worn 
out as we say today, and they must 
clear new land, burn the brush as before, 
drop their fish and corn as before and 
all would be well. This they seemed loath 
to believe, but they had but one experi¬ 
ment station to go to to get information 
that was so vital to their very existence, 
and so they started anew as before, and— 
lo!—Squanto was right, as at first, just 
as our Experiment Station should be to¬ 
day. It must have been humiliating in 
the extreme to the Pilgrims to get their 
information from such a source, but they 
must learn or starve. 
But time rolled on and the Pilgrims 
taught their instructor; for they noticed 
that the corn was always the best where 
there had been the most ashes left on the 
ground near some large brush-heap; this 
gave them an idea perhaps, after all, it 
was just the ashes, as they had learned 
from the Indians that a field worn out 
would be as good as new after it had 
been allowed to grow up again with a 
young growth of timber, this in turn cut 
down and burned as before, and presto! 
the land yielded crops as before, with the 
aid of the fish to supply the nitrogen. 
When they first noticed the fact that the 
corn was the best near where an extra 
large brush-heap had been burned, that 
was a step forward in the art of fertiliz¬ 
ing; the next step was to save the ashes 
from their log piles and from chimney cor¬ 
ners, and in the following spring these 
ashes were applied to their worn-out land 
and the usual amount of fish to each hill, 
when—lo!—a better crop of corn than 
they had grown at the start was produced 
on this worn-out field by applying Nitro¬ 
gen in the form of fish, Phosphoric Acid 
and Potash in the form of hard-wood 
ashes, and thus a long step in advance 
in fertilizing had been made. But neither 
the colonists nor the Indians knew the 
why or wherefore; they knew such was 
the fact and so were content. So for a 
long period but little advance was made 
in the art of fertilizing as a science, that 
is, in furnishing the crops with the com¬ 
mercial fertilizer as we know it today. 
But some fifty years ago or so an awak¬ 
ening seemed to take place, then came 
Guano, Bone Meal, and such like, more 
into general use. I remember quite well 
when both were introduced in my im¬ 
mediate neighborhood in Pennsylvania. 
Lime and Plaster had long been used in 
a haphazard way; I don’t think any of 
the farmers of those days had little, if 
any, idea why they used Lime, Guano, 
Fish^scrap, Bone Meal, etc. 
They knew, like Squanto, that such 
and such things gave certain results, and 
I think that was about all there was to 
it; but the use of these various ingredi¬ 
ents showed they were feeling their way, 
slowly but surely, so that in the last 
twenty-five years there has been a tre¬ 
mendous awakening, until today the art 
of fertilizing is becoming more of a 
science, not an exact one by any means, 
but far in advance of what it was a few 
years ago. But we have much to learn, 
we are just in the A. B. C.’s as yet so to 
speak, and it is of this uncertainty that 
I hesitated to produce this paper before 
