CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 233 



not, by any possibility, exclude chlorine from his experimental 

 plants. His soils and pots, the salts and water he fed his plants with, 

 were so purified that he could not detect this element in them, and 

 yet he invariably discovered it in the ashes of the plants. So, too, 

 he found titanic acid in the produce grown on the most carefully 

 purified soils. Now, it is mentioned in the Chemical News that he 

 finds a few hundredths of lithium are indispensable to the ripening 

 of barley. This element Bunsen has but recently shown to be every- 

 where distributed, yet it has hitherto been entirely unnoticed in all 

 soil and plant analyses, because of its occurrence in almost infinitesi- 

 mal quantity. 



It must be well borne in mind that Agriculture herself so- 

 called Practice is able of her own resources to judge somewhat of 

 the value of soils, is able to know if a soil be fertile or poor, is able 

 to pronounce upon its adaptation to crops, and can to a certain ex- 

 tent decide what is a good manure for this or that field. 



We are free to assert that the knowledge which is now to be gath- 

 ered from experience is able, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, 

 to give a more truthful verdict as to the capacity of a soil than any 

 amount of analysis, chemical, mechanical, or otherwise, can do. We 

 would give more for the opinion of an old, intelligent farmer than for 

 that of the most skilled chemist in most questions connected with 

 farming. Doubtless the farmer would make some blunders from 

 which chemistry might save him, but the chemist would be likely to 

 do more violence to agriculture than the farmer would to chemistry. 



By these statements, which may, but should not, surprise some of 

 our scientific friends, we merely intend to express an opinion as to 

 the present relative position towards agriculture of those who regard 

 the art from a chemical, and those who see it from an experimental, 

 point of view. 



We have great faith that chemistry and that chemical analysis 

 have done and are to do a work for agriculture that shall lay that 

 venerable art under everlasting obligations to the youthful science ; 

 but not by soil analysis alone or mainly is this to be achieved. We 

 do not assert that soil analysis is worthless ; we believe that the prob- 

 abilities of its uselessness in direct application to practice ^are so 

 great that we could rarely base any operations on it alone, and yet it 

 may in many cases promote science and give us data for conclusions 

 that are of practical use. But for these purposes it must form part 

 of a system of observations and trials, must be a step in some re- 

 search, must stand not as the index to a barren fact, but as the rev- 

 elator of fruitful ideas. 



To study the soil in the hope of benefitting agriculture, we must 

 regard all its relations to the plant. We must examine it not merely 

 from those points of view which theoretical chemistry suggests, but 

 especially from those which a knowledge of practical agriculture fur- 

 nishes. This is becoming more and more the habit of agricultural 



c? ^5 



chemists, and the results are of the happiest kind. 



Let us remember what Boussingault has said as the summing up of 

 his protracted experience and study : 



" At an epoch not far distant it was believed that a strict connec- 

 tion existed between the composition and the quality of arable soil. 

 20* 



