264 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



bert in England, have each, perhaps, given the world more of new 

 truth than he. Stockhardt's chief labor has been to teach, to pojDU- 

 larize, to encourage, and thus to promote science, and, withal, to help 

 in its application to practical life. In this great work of mediating 

 between science and the people for whose benefit science is, among 

 those who have done most for agriculture, no man, except, perhaps, 

 Justus Liebig, excels Julius Stockhardt. 



An inkling of the spirit in which Stockhardt's labors for agricult- 

 ure has been j^erformed he has himself given us, perhaps unwittingly, 

 in the illustration on the cover of his journal, " Der chemische Ack- 

 ersmann " (" The Chemical Husbandman "). In the center is a rural 

 scene. In the foreground, cattle and sheep are feeding in the com- 

 fort of a peaceful autumn day. Farther away, a reaper is laying down 

 his sickle by the waving grain to follow the heavy load that is trun- 

 dling homeward from the field. In another field a plowman has left 

 his plow in the furrow, while he and his tired horses are enjoying a 

 brief period of rest. Close by him are the bags of guano and bone- 

 dust to replace the precious ingredients of plant-food that have been 

 carried away with the harvest. Beyond is the little village, with its 

 steep-roofed cottages, and the village church surrounded by shade- 

 trees and surmounted by the tower whose bell calls the inhabitants to 

 morning work, to vesper rest, and to Sabbath worship. Directly in 

 front the ground has been cut away, and reveals, in the deep recesses 

 toward which the roots of trees and herbs are seen to penetrate, a 

 strange laboratory where imps and kobolds are busy with furnace and 

 crucible, retort and mortar, test-tube and balance, as it were, working 

 over the materials and concocting the compounds that are to be gath- 

 ered up by the plants, and make the fruit to reward the tiller of the 

 soil. Between this occult laboratory and the farm-work that is going 

 on above are the words " Praxis mit Wissenschaft " (" Practice with 

 science "). But this scene and motto are not all of the picture, nor do 

 they typify the whole of the spirit of Stockhardt's life and work. 

 Above are clouds with sunbeams streaming brightly through them 

 upon the earth below, and on them is written, ''An Gottes Segen ist 

 Alles gelegen " (" On God's blessing all depends "). 



