"Yes, Sir," said Mr. West. "I know that is true. I have visited Tennessee and I know there are some extensive areas there of practically level upland which have always been considered too poor to justify putting under cultivation, and they are called the 'Barrens'." "I know about those barren lands, too," said Percy. "Our teacher of soil fertility in college told us that a farm is more than a piece of the earth's surface. He said if we only wanted to get a large level tract of upland where the climate is mild and the rainfall abundant and where all sorts of crops do well on good soil, including the wonderful cotton crop which brings a hundred dollars for a thousand pounds, while corn brings forty dollars for a hundred bushels,--well, he said we could go to the Highland Rim of Tennessee where, according to analyses reported in 1897 by the Tennessee Experiment Station, the surface soil of the 'Barrens' contains eighty-seven pounds of phosphorus and the subsoil sixty-one pounds of phosphorus per acre, counting two million pounds of soil in each case. He said, if we didn't like that we might go into the Great Central Basin of Tennessee or the famous Blue Grass Region of Kentucky and find land that is still extremely productive and more valuable than ever, even after a hundred years of cultivation, and buy land containing from three thousand to fifteen thousand pounds of phosphorus per acre." "I know both of those sections very well," said Mr. West. "But doesn't it seem strange that the scientists at Washington would teach as they do? Why doesn't the plant food accumulate in the surface soil of those barrens? Surely they have been lying there long enough, with no crops whatever removed, so that they ought to have become very rich. I wish I had known about their phosphorus content so I could have told Professor Barstow. He was quite carried away with the Washington theory." "You ought not for a moment call it the 'Washington' theory," said Percy; "and neither is it promulgated by scientists, but rather by two or three theorists who are upheld by our greatest living optimist. Science, Sir, is a word to be spoken of always with the greatest respect. Of course you know its meaning?" "Yes, I know it comes from the Latin _scire, _to know." "Then _science _means _knowledge; _it does not mean theory or hypothesis, but absolute and positive knowledge. Is there any uncertainty as to the instant when the next eclipse will appear? No, none whatever. Science means knowledge, and men are scientists only so far as they have absolute knowledge, and to that extent every farmer is a scientist.