252 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the problem, are believed to be the first contribution to agricultural 

 chemistry which were deserving the name. Chemical affinities are 

 constantly in play, and combinations of curious interest are every- 

 where and all the time going on around us. Whether we kindle a 

 fire on the hearth, or burn a coal pit, or get up a gentler warmth to 

 forward tomato plants in a hot bed ; whether we bake bread, brew 

 beer, make soap, pile a heap of compost, or cock up hay, we bring 

 into play laws of chemical action, and he who best tmdersla7ids these 

 laws, cuji best control their results to a ftrojitahle issue. 



Important and invaluable as are the services which chemistry has 

 already rendered, and may be expected to render in the future, to 

 agriculture, in common with other arts, it is much to be regretted 

 that such extravagant and unwarranted expectations have been 

 indulged in regarding it. To hear some over sanguine people talk 

 of the influence of chemistry upon agriculture, one is tempted to 

 believe that it has but to utter a magic word and the desert would 

 forthwith blossom as the rose. The truth is, that many of the 

 questions asked of chemistry by agriculture, are of a far more diffi- 

 cult and complicated nature than those asked by most other arts. 

 The elementary substances of which plants are composed are not 

 only numerous, but they exist in them under many different forms 

 and under many varying combinations ; nor is this the only source 

 of embarrassment, for their relations to one another, to the soil 

 whence the plant springs, and to the atmosphere with which it is 

 enveloped, are farther complicated by the action of — a something — 

 of which we know absolutely nothing at all, except that it possesses 

 wonderful activity and potency, and which we call life or the vital 

 principle. So true is this, that of numerous problems in agricul- 

 ture, it is impossible to say whether chemistry or physiology might 

 be more properly interrogated for their solution. 



Let me here quote from Prof Anderson of Scotland, who as an 

 agricultural chemist, is universally admitted to have achieved a 

 position in the foremost ranks of science : 



" The application of science to agricultui-o is a subject on which 

 BO much has been said and written, during the last few years, and 

 which has occupied so much of the attention of the agricultural 

 public, that it may seem almost superfluous to add to what has 

 already been penned. It has always appeared to me, however, 

 that there are still many points of great importance for the practical 



