The manurial value of the fodders and feeds tabulated, which include all of those raised and profitable to buy, ranges from sixty-five cents per ton for brewers' grains to $21.03 for cottonseed meal; new process linseed meal is worth $16.37, wheat bran $10.07, wheat middlings $7.11, and corn meal $4.19. The straw from different farm crops would probably average $2.00 per ton, while clover hay is worth $6.07, and timothy hay but $3.63. The manurial value of the different rations mentioned in the preceding section are as follows: No. 1, maximum hay ration, costing 28 cents, has a manurial value of 9.2 cents. No. 2, minimum hay ration, costing 18.9 cents, has a manurial value of 8.2 cents. No. 3, brewers' grain ration, costs 15.3 cents; manurial value, 5.7 cents. No. 4, cottonseed meal ration, costs 14.1 cents; manurial value, 9.1 cents. No. 5, wheat bran and linseed meal ration, costs 16.8 cents; manurial value, 9.4 cents. No. 6, corn meal ration, costs 17.5 cents; manurial value, 7.9 cents. With the exception of No. 1, in these rations, the ratio of food compounds is practically identical with the standard, 1:5.4. The cost, however, ranges from 18.9 to 14.1, or a difference of over 40 per cent., and it is further shown that the cheapest ration has the maximum manurial value, which indicates that there is considerable room for choice of materials, both in reference to food and manurial values. These rations, too, have been subjected to actual test by the cow, and have proved entirely satisfactory, and show, as previously stated, that the source of materials is not so important as the questions of proportion of food compounds and digestibility. Facts like these have a money significance, and ought to incite action on the part of farmers who have not given the subject careful consideration. FARMING AND EDUCATION IN NEW JERSEY. ADDRESS BY MERRILL E. GATES, LL. D., PRESIDENT OF THE STATE COLLEGE, BEFORE THE NEW JERSEY STATE BOARD OF AGRICUL TURE, AT TRENTON, JANUARY 29TH, 1890. FARMING AND EDUCATION IN NEW JERSEY. BY PRESIDENT MERRILL E. GATES, PH. D., LL.D. There are many points of similarity between the work of the college and that of the farmer. The language in which we describe the processes of education is very largely drawn from the garden and the farm. It is not merely that common school teachers constantly remind their pupils that the early years of life are the seed-time, and that the harvest to be later reaped will depend upon the sowing done in these early years. But in the higher institutions of learning the very name "Seminary," by which such institutions are designated, means, the nursery or hot-house, where seed is planted and the young plants are trained under the most favorable circumstances possible. It is not only the poets that speak of the spring-time of youth, the summer-heat of middle life, the autumn of rich fruitage as old age draws near, and the winter of extreme old age when the harvests have been gathered, the barren fields are white with snow, and wise souls turn their thoughts more and more toward life in the mansions of that "City which hath Foundations." In articles in our educational newspapers, as often as in poetry, this likeness between education and plant-growths is dwelt upon. The necessary mental food for growing young minds is described in the very words in which the farmer speaks of plant food for his growing crops. Commencement day addresses and essays upon educational themes are crowded with words and phrases borrowed from horticulture and agriculture. Even that much-abused word, "culture," which stands as the representative of the best fruits of education and of life, is a borrowed term which properly pertains to the culture of the fields, and furnishes the root syllable and the root idea in the name of the society which I have the honor of addressing to-night, the "New Jersey State Board of Agriculture." But it is not merely the use of similar terms that links teaching with agriculture. The obligation which rests upon every man, to make the best possible use of the powers which God has intrusted to him, is in no way more strongly emphasized than by the experience of the farmer. The certainty with which land that receives no attention not only loses its value, but comes to be, through taxation, a source of positive loss to the owner; the absolute necessity of paying attention to the tillage of the ground and its proper enrichment with the food which the crops you desire to raise must have; the certainty with which increased care given to tillage and enrichment results in an increase in that which the soil produces; and that constant competition in the markets of the world, which teaches farmers with such relentless logic that if they would make their farms pay, they must employ the best methods, the most persistent and untiring watchfulness and unstinted toil; all these phases of the experience of the farmer can be duplicated in that of the college and the school. No occupation in life more constantly emphasizes the need and the value of education than does that of the farmer. And this, not only because scientific farming pays, but also for a still higher reason. The great object lessons which nature teaches man-lessons of responsibility for making the most of the natural forces intrusted to his care-in the farmer's experience, seed time and harvest are continually emphasizing. It is not to be wondered at then, that throughout the world, and not alone in our own State, there is a steadily growing disposition on the part of men engaged in the pursuit of agriculture to acquire for themselves, and to demand for their children, still larger educational facilities. A man should be educated, not simply because the young man with an education can make more money from his farm than can the uneducated man, but because the essential force and dignity of manhood can never be made of full value unless the cultivating care, the tillage of education, is bestowed |