336 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



gross. That is what I call empirical experimentation. It is 

 scientific. It is exactly the kind of experimentation by which 

 these sciences, about the accuracy of which we prate so much, 

 have been developed. Did men sit down and reason out mathe- 

 matically all the problems they have presented to us, before they 

 began to experiment in physics ? Not at all. They tried experi- 

 ments with levers, and pullies, and Atwood's machine, and a 

 thousand other contrivances, putting questions to nature through 

 them. We cannot always employ mechanics and mathematics in 

 asking questions. For we do not always desire answers in me- 

 chanical or mathematical terms. We get them through massing 

 the conditions; always seeking, however, to put our question 

 pointedly; and when more conditions than one were involved, 

 always knowing the fact, and reasoning correctly as to their im- 

 portance to the experiment. 



Now, then, if there be a fixed order resulting from the inter- 

 dependence of the sciences, and if that is the order in which they 

 shall be perfectly unfolded, and if they have not yet reached that 

 perfect unfolding, is it not hopeless for any one, no matter who he 

 may be, to attempt to sketch to you a scientific method of agri- 

 culture that shall be perfect ? I will contrast agriculture with 

 one of the. learned professions; and I do that the more readily 

 because I see some of its representatives here, who will bear me 

 witness in what I say. I refer now to medicine. We talk of it 

 often as if it were a science ; we dignify it with that high-sound- 

 ing name, — "the science of medicine." Gentlemen, it is no 

 science at all. On the contrary, it just puts 'its hand upon this 

 and that and the other science, each imperfect, selects whatever 

 useful facts they may have evolved, and uses them as it best may. 

 Now, what do we do, in general, when Ave are out of health, when 

 some pestilence comes upon us, or we abuse the laws of nature 

 until we find ourselves suffering from disease ? We send for a 

 man who has given himself to the study of these varicrus sub- 

 sidiary sciences, that make up the collection of facts that we call 

 medicine, and ought, therefore, to be able to cast more liglit upon 

 our case than we can ourselves. That is what we do, if we are 

 rational men, — we send for a physician. But yet there are plenty 

 of people wlio say, " If I am sick, I don't want any doctor round 

 me. 1 would rather have the herb teas that my wife can steep for 

 me ; or i\Irs. So-and-So, who knows all about fevers and all about 

 dysentery ; or Mrs. So^and-So, who is very good in sickness." 



