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BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



applied to reasoning- in space g-ives rise to geometry ; and when 

 geometry has been perfected, and aa'c take the materials thus far 

 secured — namely, arithmetic, algebra and geometry, — and apply 

 those to force, an entirely new conception, we are then able to 

 develop mechanics ; and I use that term in its broadest sense, 

 as embracing machines and machinery, astronomy, hydrostatics, 

 hydrodynamics, and everything that pertains to natural philosophy 

 and natural philosophy applied. When this is done we are pre- 

 pared to advance a step further, and develop chemistry ; and 

 when chemistry has been thoroughly perfected, we arc prepared 

 to advance a step further still, and develop physiology or the 

 science of life, whether vegetable or animal. 



I have followed in this statement of fact the natural order that 

 we should pursue if we were to continue one thing until we had 

 accomplished it before commencing another. It is, however, by 

 no means incumbent iipon ns to perfect any one of these prepara- 

 tory sciences before we enter upon the succeeding one. For 

 instance, you may do something in chemistry before you have 

 settled everything in natural philosophy ; you may do something 

 in natural philosophy before everything in mathematics is settled ; 

 but if you were to go clean through everything, and to develop 

 each science in its natural order, yon would pursue that which I 

 have given. 



Now, have the sciences, as we find them to-day, in a more or 

 less perfect condition, been developed in the order which I have 

 sketched ? Have mathematicians seated themselves and patiently 

 toiled through the mazes of their calculations and completed all 

 their labor before they entered upon natural philosophy ? Not at 

 all. Did the natural philosopher conclude all his work in physics 

 before he ventured upon chemistry ? By no means. l>id the 

 chemist complete all his work before the physiologist dared to 

 reason upon organic structures ? No ; all these pursuits have been 

 going along at the same time, side by side. How has this been 

 done ? By the employment of another method, which we will 

 call the empirical method. There is, then, the scientific method, 

 •which we might pursue, beginning at the simplest elements and 

 evolving a complete, perfected science ; there is, on the other 

 hand, an empirical method, which takes up all the conditions of 

 an experiment in the gross, and evolves results. I will, for th^ 

 sake of clearness, put it in this wa}- : The one reasons in exten- 

 sion ; it takes an involved principle, evolves it, proves it, and then 



