Norwich bulletin., 1916-02-12

Written Specially for The Bulletin. Modern science is surely very wonderful thing. Not only when It reaches out toward the frontiers or infinity with its marvellous telescope and spectroscopic vision; not only when 1t digs backward into the incon- ceivaoly little and counts and Welshs ions so small that millions Of them, punched and welded together, wouldn t make a point big enough for the mic roscope to see; but also very wonderful when it applies the discoveries winch it has made in these opposite regions of the incredibly vast and the ln- f1nitesimaIly small to the common needs of common life.
 Moreover, the great modern scientists are generally wholly admirable per sons tending towards under rather than er-statenlent in their Sedulous anxiety for the truth, hesltant aoouI making any dogmatic assertions, mod est to the point of humility in thelr personal claims.
 But there are some half or pseudo scientists, clinging along the frlnges of real science, who classify in a diff ferent herd-book
 Some of this latter sort occasionally get mixed up with the experiment sta tions and agricultural colleges and de- co partments of agriculture.
 AAS0S versions have made a good many practical farmers suspicious of the term scientific farming Once in a while you find one who seems to think that the vagaries of his own untame9 imagination ought to be accepted against the teachings of actual fact and demonstrated experience.
 This doesn't appeal to hard-headed and hard-fisted practicians.
 Once in a while you find one who
 al1 '-n1 PnhJ0 HoocS barn, over the mountains and under the waves, where torrents are deepest and mountains are steepest in an attempt to put salt on it's tail, rather than reach his hand out and pick it up from where 1t lies peace fully purring beside his chair.
 This doesn't appeal to direct-minded men whose idea of getting there is to go by the shortest road.
 The latest "scientific"-so- called excursion around Robin Hoods barn which I have happened to hear of is the search of the national department of agriculture for what one editor describes as "a practicable and pEohL- able method of utilizing the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of pota- toes that are thrown away each year to rot, for the lack of profitable market ln their natural state"
 This, I s'pose, means little potatoes md specked potat0es-culls as they are caned-and bigger potatoes when the market price happens to be so far off that they aren't worth bagging.
 Now, to beqn wi%h, don't see where the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of potatoes that are thrown away come from.
 Tn 1911, the last year concernin g which I have at hand official statistics of the potato crop Of the United States, it consisted of 292, 737.GC0 bush els, worth on the farms $233.77S 900. the proportion of culls which were re- jected before the 292,737,030 bushels of salable potatoes were measured. But I've been farming some years and l have neignbors who farm, and I have a general idea of the proportion of culls to sala,bles. As for myself, l practice rather intensive form of potato culture. and last season we averaged less than a peek of culls to every ten bushels of sa1able tuberfS This is at the rate of one to forty. \ neighbor who dug about two hundred bushels of marketable potatoes tells me that he had the most little and grubby ones he ever saw. He reckOne es that he had to cull out one bushel from every ten.
 Taking his exceptionally hard luck however, as the country-w wide rule, for a crop of 292 737 900 bushels good po- tatoes, there would have been 29,273, 700 bushels of culls. If they had been worth just as much per bushel as the marketable potatoes. they would have been worth $23, 3,377, 800.
 That is not "hundreds of millions oi dollars worth'-not even on the luna tic idea that they ought to be valued IS high as first quality tubers.
 But $23, ,oGo, GOO is some money, and f it can be saved, is worth saving. Il would amount to about $2 a head fol the farmers Of the country
 How do our scientific friends of the department propose to save it for us