262 



BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Ao-ricultual exports impoverish and ultimately exhaust any 

 soil. Only a few favored regions are regularly fertilized by 

 the exceptional arrangements of nature. The Nile valley, in 

 Egypt, is annually top-dressed with the richest and finest 

 debris of the tropical jungles and forests of half Eastern 

 Africa, poured over all her acres by a never-failing inunda- 

 tion, and with diligent irrigation is as fertile to-day as it was 

 two thousand years ago. 



But Italy, Germany, France, Britain, and the United States, 

 have seen, or are seeing, the productiveness of thousands of 

 their fields decline to a profitless minimum, until lands once 

 beautiful with harvests are desolate and abandoned. But the 

 artificial barrenness of exhaustion, like the natural barrenness 

 of the heath, or the sand-down, yields to the touch of science ; 

 and in all the older countries I have named, the work of rec- 

 lamation is in full progress, and barring some great calamity 

 of politics or nature, we are confident that the producing 

 power of their soil will never again be less than now, but 

 will increase many fold in the future, until they become gar- 

 dens in all their breadth and to the very hill tops. 



Many pages might be occupied in recounting the gain which 

 ao-riculture, like all our industries, has received at the hand 

 of science. It is but a few years since agriculture has been 

 taught in universities and in special agricultural schools, be- 

 cause it is but recently that there has been anything to teach 

 beyond the routine of manual practice that can be learned on 

 any well managed farm. But now the Professor of Agricul- 

 ture, the Professor of Agricultural Chemistry, the Professor 

 of Vegetable Physiology, of Animal Physiology, find super- 

 abundant occupation in acquiring, systematizing, and com- 

 municating the facts and truths that constitute agricultural 

 science. If in this country their labors in communicating are 

 not excessive, it is because of special circumstances which 

 will soon be changed. 



Much of the advantage which agriculture has derived from 

 science has come to it in the same way that President Clap 

 cheapened the seed drill, viz : "out of regard for the Publick." 



