198 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



from which this, at once practical and scientific question should 

 be studied, and in impressing upon your minds some prominent 

 and important facts regarding it, so as to lead to improvement in 

 practice by a better knowledge of principle, or to further inquiry, 

 and so to an extension of our knowledge, I shall feel that the ob- 

 jects of my desire and endeavor in addressing you have been fully 

 attained. 



The Chairman said he was sure they all felt very much obliged 

 to Mr. Lawcs for the very clear and satisfactory account he had 

 given them of the present condition of science with regard to the 

 feeding of stock and the production of manure. The paper which 

 Mr. Lawes had read. was based upon investigations which had 

 very peculiar merit. They had not been undertaken as matters of 

 mere scientific curiosity in the laboratory ; they were not merely 

 the paste-and-scissors compilations which a great deal of the 

 literature of agricultural science unfortunately consisted of at the 

 present day ; but they were the well reasoned and carefully ascer- 

 tained results of labor, and he must say honest investigation, 

 conducted under circumstances unusually favorable, and with a 

 degree of cautious care which was the most valuable part of the 

 career by which Mr. Lawes had earned the well-merited and gen- 

 eral repute which he had acquired. Some years ago he had the 

 pleasure of visiting Mr. Lawes' establishment, and of seeing the 

 plans of investii^ation which were there put in operation for the 

 benefit of agricultural science ; and he did venture to say — and he 

 had some experience of chemical investigations — that there did 

 not exist in Europe so worthy a national monument of agricultural 

 progress as the establishment which, under Mr. Lawes' care, and 

 by his conscientious industry, had been carried on ia the neighbor- 

 hood of London. 



Dr. Cameron rose to express his opinion of the value of the 

 paper which they had heard read, and to bear testimony to the 

 great services which Mr. Lawcs had rendered to agricultural 

 science, and to agriculture generally. lie was a scientific and 

 practical man in his own person, and he knew of no one who was 

 so capable as Mr. Lawes of clearing up the obscure things in agri- 

 cultural science. The obscurity of scientific agriculture had been 

 to a great extent cleared away by Mr. Lawes' paper, and many of 

 his contributions to the philosopliical transactions of the Koyal 

 Society had been of the greatest importance. He thougJtt, with 



