MAINE STATE SOCIETY. 5'j' 



the side of the veterinarian, who has to learn bj study and observa- 

 tion many things that the regular physician can ascertain by simple 

 question and answer. 



Similar comparisons might be made with all the so called learned 

 professions, and with every branch of science. It is the utility of 

 these studies that should give them dignity and render them honor- 

 able among men. Quackery in the physician ranks with quackery 

 in the pulpit, only as the loss of life compares with the loss of the 

 soul. Quackery in law, quackery in the arts of life, and quackery 

 in agriculture, are alike the same thing — quackery. The physi- 

 cian who has but a single remedy for all human disease, is no more 

 a quack than the farmer who fancies all the diseases of his do- 

 mestic animals located in the end of the tail. So the milliner or 

 the tailor, who aims to improve the human form divine by convert- 

 ing grace into deformity or proportion into disproportion, stands side 

 by side with the farmer who cruelly aims to improve nature by 

 shearing his horse, or teaching his tail to point upward instead of 

 downward. True, genuine science, whether in the study, in the 

 shop, or on the farm, alone is honorable. And who, we ask, can 

 make those branches of science that adapt themselves to agriculture 

 more serviceable to mankind than the farmer ? 



"The advancement made in other sciences, " says a late writer, 

 "while agriculture has been comparatively stationary, are so many 

 evidences that it, too, must have its turn — and these v^ry improve- 

 ments in other sciences are but preliminary and contributory to it. 

 Of geology, mineralogy, chemistry, botany, vegetable physiology, 

 entomology and natural philosophy, the ancients were comparatively 

 ignorant. The great attainments which have recently been made 

 in these sciences are all so many powerful and natural auxiliaries, 

 soon to be collected and combined in aid of the progress of agricul- 

 ture. The great laws of nature are still and ever the same. It is 

 man's knowledge or understanding of them alone that changes. Life 

 and death, growth and decay, formation and decomposition, are still 

 and ever going on ; and nothing changes but man's apprehension of 

 their processes, and his power to apply them to useful and profitable 

 results. The means open to our use are contained in the whole 

 laboratory of nature, and the power to use them is measured only 

 by our acquaintance with her laws. " 



