The Feeding of Plants and Animals

1905

Royal New Zealand Plunket Society Records AG-007-008/029/013. Hocken Collection

Wellington: Whitcombe & Tombs

In 1905, just after a return from Japan, Truby King wrote The Feeding of Plants and Animals, a pamphlet that represented the basis of his thought and approach to his life’s work. He believed that right care and right nutrition produced healthy, vigorous plants and animals. And by aiding Nature, especially applicable to plants, he suggested sensible rotation and tillage, with a judicious use of manures. Generalizing from his experiments with plants and animals, he applied ‘right care and right nutrition’ to the rearing of human beings, hoping that ‘a strong, healthy and capable race’ would evolve.