AGRICULTURE AND RURAL ECONOMY. 



By Professor W. 0. AT WATER, 



Wesletan University, Middletown, Conk. 



I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF RECENT PROGRESS. 



UNION OF SCIENCE WITH PRACTICE IN AGRICULTURE. 



In a late number of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural 

 Society Dr. Voelcker says: "A characteristic feature of the 

 last ten or fifteen years in relation to scientific agriculture is 

 the closer approach of the man of science and the man of 

 practice. Both appear to understand each other better. The 

 mutual interchange of ideas, and the better acquaintance of 

 the latter with the leading principles of chemistry, and that 

 of the former with the rudiments of practical agriculture have 

 materially promoted agricultural progress, and given a more 

 decided and more widely extended direction to a rational 

 plan of farming." 



Of the results of this union of science with practice Dr. 

 Voelcker says again : " In reviewing the progress of English 

 agriculture since 1860, one must be struck with the powerful 

 influence which the dissemination of sound scientific princi- 

 ples, the results of numerous chemico-agricultural researches, 

 has exerted upon the various branches of practical agricult- 

 ure. The improvements connected w T ith cultivation and 

 farm management are both numerous and important ; but 

 they chiefly spring from one source, which is in itself the 

 most characteristic feature of the last thirty or thirty-five 

 years, and which . . . may be described as the substitution 

 of sound reasoninq; and arithmetical calculation for the em- 

 pirical knowledge relied upon by our ancestors." 



What Dr. Voelcker says of the present influence of science 

 in England is likewise true on the continent of Europe, and 

 emphatically so in this country. 



