SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE AND HORTICULTURE.

An address prepared for delivery before the Farmers' Institute held at Kirksville, Mo., December 22, 1888, by Geo. D. Purinton, Professor of Biology,

University of Missouri.

It is with no ordinary pleasure that I appear before you in the discussion of a topic which should enlist the closest interest of every citizen, the methods by which the great industries of agriculture and horticulture can best be carried on.

These two great branches of industry constitute, have and will ever continue to constitute the very essence and backbone of American industry and American wealth. We are essentially an agrarian people, and we stand among the nations of the earth pre-eminently as agricultural producers, and the production and transportation of our commodities employs the continued effort of more men and means than all other industries combined.

The vast scale upon which our production is carried on makes it clearly apparent that any slight advance in the facility and economy of production would immeasurably increase its aggregate, and yield a corresponding increase in the sum total of our wealth. It is the end of scientific agriculture and horticulture to bring about this advance in the facility and economy of production.

At best the problem of overcoming nature in production is a difficult one, and many a hard battle lies in the producer's way. The earth must literally be subdued before it can minister to the comfort and convenience of mankind. The warfare is one of mind against matter. The wondrous forces in nature must be tamed and yoked fast to the chariot of human progress, or they will continue to be wild and wasteful. No man can become a successful producer unless he possesses intelligence, and he can never become a great producer unless he possess great intelligence, and this can be fully developed only by an earnest and constant study of the principles underlying production. We must know that gram and fruit are the products of plants, and plants in turn are the products of the soil, and the arable soil the pro

CONSTITUENTS OF PLANTS.

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duct of the action of wind and rain and cold and heat upon the rocks whereby they were broken up, altered in chemical properties and rendered soluble in water and suitable for absorption by the growing plant. In order to understand the philosophy of growth we must know, first, the composition of the plant and the fruit it bears; second, from what source it receives its components; and third, the conditions on which it takes and assimilates these inorganic constituents, and continues in a state of health and productiveness.

Let us take an ordinary plant (a stalk of wheat, for instance) and analyze it. We shall find the plant to be composed of fourteen kinds of matter: oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, lime, potash, soda, magnesia, iron, manganese, silica, phosphorus, sulphur and chlorine, and upon experiment we shall find also that all plants gather their substance in varying proportions from some or all of these fourteen elementary bodies. If, then, the plant lives by absorption from the soil and air, it next becomes necessary to know the ingredients of the soil and air and to supply any deficiency in either supporting element.

Experiment has shown that oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen are to be found in the air, and that the other ten elements are constitnents of the soil. I couple the terms agriculture and horticulture together because they are closely related to each other, indeed we may include both under the generic term agriculture, for the very derivation of this term signifies a general tilling or cultivation of the earth, and the products arising from this cultivation, whether distinctively fruits or vegetables, so called, are agricultural products. The term horticulture, then, as distinguished from agriculture, I will call merely empyrical and nominal. Thus the fruit-producer is clearly an agriculturist, a farmer, and I may add that every farmer ought to be a fruit-grower, and an intelligent fruit-grower. This latter, the intelligence of the agriculturist, is the great desideratum of the science, and the object of the meeting which I now address; and we say that all this trouble and labor is expended in the interest of the one class-the farmer-the producer. In a sense this is true. In a wider sense it is not; for the farmer with the crop he annually harvests is the very substratum of all other branches of business, of all trades and professions. The merchant, the lawyer, the manufacturer, the "bloated monopolist," all are dependent upon him for the very sinues of life. Let the blight or pest fall upon the crop of the yearly tiller of the soil, and the very beams of Wall Street tremble. Great business corporations may fail, earthquaked cities may totter in ruins, and, as usual, the great thoroughfares of our common country continue to pour in the life blood of public prosperity, but cut short the annual crop of fruit and grain, and the life blood of

commerce stagnates in the public veins, and statesmanship gasps in the arms of a fainting nation. I would say, then, elevate the farmer, increase his intelligence, enlarge his facilities and capacity for husbandry, and you confer a like boon upon every other trade and occupation, for the agriculturist stands at the threshhold of them all. It is lamentably true that while the trades thrive and grow fat in reconverting the products of the soil, a majority of the original producers are, themselves, only "comfortable livers" at best, and too often belong to that numerous class who are scarcely able, despite their most tireless efforts, to keep body and soul together. In farming, as in every other profession, those to whom comes the most marked success, those that tower up above their fellows, are the educated few. I tell you, gentlemen, we must find our really successful farmers and fruit-growers among those who are trained in these pursuits. Classical schools and colleges of liberal arts, the country over, are annually drawing our brightest young men from the country homes into other avenues, and the ranks of the farmers are doomed to be replenished by the dull and uninteresting young men whom fathers, in the parlance of the times, pronounce "incapable of taking an education." And yet capital oppresses labor, and labor marvels and repines at the hardships and privations of her lot. I tell you, the only correction lies in the educaof labor. I do not mean by the education of the farmer, the once prevalent idea that an education lay only in the mystic association of musty lore, or the acquisition of exhaustless storers of classical fiction; that will do very well for those who follow the so-called "learned profes sions," but I submit that it wont do as a method for making farmers and fruit-growers; it wont fill our stock-pens and dairy-yards; it wont turn the ponderous fly-wheels of traffic or of commerce. In this great, teeming, thronging busy world we need that sort of training which is of practical utility in the real affairs of life. Classical education may fill a necessary demand among certain classes of our citizenship, but I submit, that the industrial life of our commonwealth and our nation demands an education that is tangible and practical. We need an education that will fit men for the business of life.

Agricultural education means the application of science to practi cal agriculture, and until this scientific phase of husbandry shall have been more thoroughly developed, our farmers need not expect to compete with men who have had technical training in other industries. You may continue to raise your apples and corn by a rigid adherence to the crude methods of the fathers, but the factory man and the distiller will as certainly pocket the profits, and grow fat at your expense. You must know the principles of chemistry, botany, zoology, forestry and

veterinary science and their application to the processes of agriculture and stock-breeding, in order to produce your crop intelligently and economically, and keep your place in the line of competition.

The best talent must be kept on the farm and cultivated to its fullest development. It is not surprising that the keenest intellects among the country youth are eager to escape the drudgery of primitive and precarious methods of tilling the soil, and to engage in more pleasing and lucrative employment. Experience has shown that where agriculture has been practiced as a science, the returns from the soil have yielded as great profits as an equal expenditure of capital and effort in other lines of industry can produce. But let us return to a point alluded to in the outset of this discussion, and put the practical test of science to the position I have taker.

If

Let us take some pure dry sand. It is to all appearance, destitute of the fourteen elements of which I have already spoken, as existing in the earth and air as the component parts of all plants. But it may have absorbed some gaseous bodies from the air. In order to free it perfectly from such possible ingredients that could promote growth, we will heat it to redness and allow it to remain at that temperature for several days, until all volatile bodies must certainly be eliminated. I will now place some of the cooled sand, composed of neither volatile nor seemingly soluble parts, in a suitable vessel, wet it with distilled water, and plant in the wet sand a given weight of corn, wheat or oats. Remember, now, that there is nothing present but the hard, insoluble silica of which the sand is composed, and the pure, distilled water. the surrounding temperature is suitable for germination, in a few days the grain will sprout, and grow with some vigor. If, when the stalks have attained their maximum growth, they be removed from the sand. and weighed, they will be found to have gained five times the original weight of the seed. The addional weight has then come only from the air and the water together with a minute amount of silica that might have been dissolved. That is to say, growth may take place with only four ingredients out of the fourteen previously enumerated, viz.: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, all gases, and all contained in water and the air, leaving the other ten unemployed. Now, let us vary our experiment. I now take the same weight of seed as in the preceding case, and add pure water to another vessel of sand, but, in addition, I add lime, potash, soda, magnesia, iron, manganese, silica, phosphorus, sulphur, and chlorine, the other ten ingredients that were omitted in the first experiment. When the stalks are grown, as before, I remove and weigh them. The weight has increased seven times its original. This weight may

still be increased by omission of the ten elements, and the addition of some nitrogenous matter, i. e., some body rich in nitrogen, such as dried blood, or cotton-seed meal. Once more I try the experiment, and use both the nitrogenous matter and the water with the ten minerals. The change is now very marked. In the first experiment the stalks were small and produced no grain; in the two succeeding cases. there was considerable increase, but in the last the grain is large, well-developed and fully headed-equal to a similar crop in the richest soil. I have learned, then, by a scientific study of the question, that certain bodies are necessary to perfect plant growth and fruitage, and that perfect success in growth is exactly commensurate with the proper application of these bodies. And I might learn by experiment, with equal certainty, the exact ingredients and proper proportions suitable to the growth of all plants. Now, if I have done this, I have learned how I may increase my crop from six to ten per cent.—nearly double-by the judicious use of plant food, or fertilizers. We have now fought the battle with nature, and have triumphed. We have solved the perplexing problem of pushing nature to her utmost same principles may be applied to the growth of fruit, and the capacity for production increased two-fold. Again, by experiment we may learn which ingredient is the dominant or leading element in the growth of each plant. Thus, for example, nitrogenous matter is the dominant of wheat.

The

The inference is that large quantities of nitrogenous matter-stable products, bone meal, or animal and vegetable matter and but little of the other ten elements, should by used to produce the best results with wheat. When we consider that these ten ingredients exist (with the exception of lime, potash and phosphorus), in abundance in all natural soils, we see at a glance, how simple has become the problem of fertilization.. Under this simplified phase of the problem, we have only three elements and nitrogenous matter, instead of ten elements and nitrogenous matter.

Potash is the dominant of the grape. The inference is simple, viz.: Use for grape growing a fertilizer in which potash is in predominance.

A

The same is true for the potato, the pea, the bean and clover. Phosphoric acid is the dominant of sugar cane and Indian corn. general fertilizer which has given excellent results consists of: