258 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the scientific classification of plants is not ■without value to him, as 

 it shows the natural relation which one species bears to another, the 

 limits within which a certain class of experiments must necessarily 

 be confined, and the probable fitness of food and treatment for new 

 plants which may be introduced to his notice. 



Botany, in its broader sense, is understood to include vegetable 

 physiology, already alluded to, and the importance of which can 

 hardly be over-estimated. Says Prof. Lindley: 



" There is scarcely an operation in the art of agriculture which 

 does not depend upon the knowledge of the phenomena which are 

 explained by vegetable physiology ; and no man can understand 

 the principles on which he acts, unless he has made himself master 

 of its fundamental laws. All the great improvements in the prepa- 

 ration of land for cropping were proposed in the first instance by 

 vegetable physiologists ; or depend essentially upon the operation 

 of laws which they have explained. Applied, in the first instance, 

 to gardening, and tested there, they have gradually extended them- 

 selves to the field, where their true origin has been forgotten, and 

 men no longer remember how their improved practice came to be 

 thought of. Draining is an example of this : its beneficial efiects 

 depend upon circumstances with which vegetable pln'siologists 

 have long been familiar. Ths, improvement of the races of plants, 

 the preservation of purity in their propagation, the mode of manur- 

 ing tliem, the effect of it when well or ill applied, and a thousand 

 other things of like nature, are wholly influenced by laws which it 

 is impossible to understand correctly in the absence of a familiarity 

 with the principles of vegetable physiology independent of chemis- 

 try, 



A person desirous of studying agriculture upon scientific princi- 

 ples, the only principles that are safe, requires to know the circum- 

 stances which eflect the germination of seeds : why in some seasons 

 they wall not grow, while in others their success is perfect. His 

 attention must be drawn to the conditions most favorable or 

 luifavorable to the progress of the seedling plant, to the gradual 

 consolidation of its parts, to the development of the w^ondrous 

 organs which the Creator has given it to feed with and multiply. 

 The circumstances most favorable to the perfect action of these 

 organs, to the foi'mation of the flower, the fertilization of tlie seed, 

 the preservation or deterioration of the peculiar properties which 

 skill has fixed in those artificial forms of vegetation which consti- 

 tute the majority of cultivated plants, arc other matters of funda- 

 mental importance, the ignorance of which degrades cultivation to 

 the level of empiricism, and deprives agriculture of those noble 

 attributes wdiich have placed it, by common consent, at tlie head of 

 all human occupations. They are all most imi)ortant subjects of 

 consideration with those who would stud}^ agriculture pliilosophi- 

 cally, or who expect to introduce improvements of moment into 

 ordinary practice : for although it may be true that accident has 



