46 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



niucli time, great care and dexterity in manipulation, and a 

 knowledge of all the disturbing influences and sources of error. 

 This few farmers have the time or opportunity to acquire, and 

 few would, for the sake of making the few chemical examinations 

 they might in their lifetime require, be willing to devote to the 

 study, time vrhich might be so much better spent in acquiring a 

 practical knowledge of their own noble profession. Besides 

 this, the expense of fitting up a laboratory would more than pay 

 for all the analyses any farmer is likely ever to need. The 

 many formulas which have been proposed for the use of farmers 

 are therefore of very doubtful utility. Let every farmer make 

 a laboratory of his barn yard, and carefully collect and employ 

 all the liquid as well as solid manures within his reach, and if 

 the chemist is not enriched thereby, his field will be." 



It is not the chemist and geologist alone, who have done good 

 service to the farmer. The entomologist, by researches into 

 the history and habits of insects injurious to vegetation, and 

 the means of obviating or lessening their ravages ; the physi* 

 ologist, by observing, arranging and systematizing the phenomena 

 attendant upon vital action, and deducintr therefrom useful les^ 

 sons — for it should be borne in mind that the operations of 

 nature are synthetical, rather than analytical, and in order to 

 promote growth and health, we should understand the necessary 

 conditions — 'have both made valuable contributions to agriculture. 

 So, too, has natural philosophy been questioned to some pur* 

 pose, and the application of its teachings by the scientific 

 mechanic, has resulted in the improved implements of hus* 

 bandry which we now see in use. Compare the plough of to- 

 day, with that of fifty or a hundred years ago, and how utterly 

 unlike do we find them. Thorough work is now done with case, 

 where before, with greater labor, the ground was little better 

 than torn or scratched. If it be asked whence comes the dif- 

 ference ? the answer is obvious. By careful study into the laws 

 of motion, and of mechanical forces, with a thorough testing of 

 the strength of materials; in other words, by the application of 

 science; and this is an instance not to be winked out of sight, 

 or objected to as visionary theory, or book fanning. It is one 

 readily appreciable by every farmer, and its value is capable of 

 estimation as a matter of dollars and cents ; and yet the plough 



