;  ., i ‘ ’* -
é t  i
Q 8 Dedicdtion of the New Addition  
i · land and not the crop which requires the culture, and that the supposed  
i benefits of root pruning—always theoretical—do not exist.
2 Again, the general benefit of leguminous crops was early learned, 5
E ‘ but the reason remained a mystery concealed forever from unaided  
j farming experience. The tubercles were discovered, it is true, but li
  they were popularly known as "seeds." Their function was not even _
l suspected, and in the nature of case could never have been detected ’j
  . _ with the apparatus of farming. , .
~ Within our own recollection, England built fleets of ships to bring g
I . . guano from the South Sea Islands and wondered where the next supply j
  ` V of nitre was to come from, while over eleven pounds of nitrogen rested it
  , upon every acre of Great Britain as, indeed, upon every acre of the .
  world, and the leguminous crops stood waiting to be intelligently set to
  work.
{ , _ Certain lands were called "sour"—a marvelously accurate diagnosis,
t ‘ as we now know, and experience learned that lime is good for sour land, i
i but, as usual, it overleaped itself and used the caustic form and in l
l . quantities that injured the soil, giving rise to the old adage, "Lime l
gi I enriches the father, but impoverishes the son," from which we should [
{ ` deduce that no right-minded father would lime his land. Science has  
E_ corrected the practice and again we are liming the land, while the adage
  has passed into ancient history as a curious landmark of our wanderings i
* here and there on the way outwardito the light. A
i   Diseases of plants and animals were early noticed, but parasitism ·
, - was a mystery too deep for the unaided vision and it is not strange that
Q the vengeance of God and the presenee of devils were invoked as the
l causes of disease and that supernatural or foolish methods were adopted
;. for relief. Our word "lunatic" bears permanent witness to this era in
Y our development and while we have not yet solved the mystery of insan-
  ’ ity as distinct from degeneracy, yet we all know where the problem lies i
’2 —that it is in the deranged functions of a particular organ, not in the
  malevolent influence of our evening luminary.
  The practice of breeding was well advanced by empirical methods,
  both in animals and plants, but the common experience of the most suc-
·. I cessful men was that the hybrid was unmanageable and in every way
i, undesirable; that it frequently possessed, it was true, most highly desir-
‘i ~ able qualities, but, as the phrase went, they were "not transmissible."
  We know now as one of the first results of science working in this field
 _ that the characters of the hybrid are transmissible and that the hybrid
  presents an ever new collection of possibilities for future and modified
ifs races. Why had not experience arrived at the same conclusion? Only
ff.  because the tangle was too much for the casual observer, who had
  , learned to look for the manifestations of heredity in each individual of ‘
i` every generation. The unit character was too refined a fact to be de-
i