countries are producing about twice as large crops as they did a
hundred years ago. He thinks it is because they do their work more
thoroughly than we do. He says that 'a little farm well tilled' is
the key to the solution of our difficulties."

"That might seem to be a good guess as to the probable relation of
cause and effect," replied Percy, "but we ought not to overlook some
well known facts that have an important bearing. It is exactly a
hundred years since DeSaussure of France, first gave to the world a
clear and correct and almost complete statement concerning the
requirements of plants for plant food and the natural sources of
supply. Sir Humphrey Davy, Baron von Liebig, Lawes and Gilbert, and
Hellriegel followed DeSaussure and completely filled the nineteenth
century with accumulated scientific facts relating to soils and
plant growth.

"Sir John Bennett Lawes, the founder of the Rothamsted Experiment
Station, the oldest in the world, on his own private estate at
Harpenden, England, began his investigations in the interest of
practical agricultural science soon after coming into possession of
Rothamsted in 1834. In 1843 he associated with him in the work
Doctor Joseph Henry Gilbert, and for fifty-seven years those two
great men labored together gathering agricultural facts. Sir John
died in 1900, and Sir Henry the following year.

"That the people of Europe have made some use of the science thus
evolved is evident from the simple fact that they are taking out of
the United States every year about a million tons of our best
phosphate rock for which they pay us at the point of shipment about
five millions dollars; whereas, if this same phosphate were applied