Repository: UIHistories Project: Booklet - Addresses from Inauguration of Noyes [PAGE 12]

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11

strumental in greatly increasing the yield

and improving the quality of agricultural products. Weeds constitute another enemy of the farmer's crops. Where cultivation can be employed throughout the growing season weeds can, of course, be kept down. But in the growing of small grains and grasses this method of destroying them is impossible. In some countries the yield and quality of this class of crops are greatly reduced by weeds. But chemistry has apparently found a way to remedy this difficulty. The latest achievement in this respect is to spray the growing crop with the solution of a chemical which kills the weeds and does not injure the crop. The chemical employed for this purpose is ferrous sulphate in a ten-per-cent. solution. I t does not injure cereals, corn or even grasses and clover, but destroys or retards the growth of the most noxious weeds to such an extent that the yield of crops has been increased twenty per cent. One of the greatest services which chemistry has rendered to the amelioration of the farmer's vocation is the protection assured against artificial and fraudulent imitations of numerous genuine products. A few of the most vicious abuses, through which the farmer and consumer suffered alike, were the sale of oleomargarine for genuine butler, which almost destroyed the

dairy industry; the sale of artificially colored distilled vinegar for cider vinegar,

which caused millions of bushels of apples

tr) pot in the orchards of the country; the

Hale of tfluCOSe \ <>v maple syrup and hono\

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