SCIENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA 



area of unoccupied and unimproved land in the great West, together 

 with the many other inducements to a settlement in those splendid, 

 rising regions, make part of our people indifferent to the fate of the 

 Atlantic States, and dazzle others to such an extent, that they see no 

 danger in the exhaustion and final abandonment of their former homes; 

 at least they see no danger for them and that is about all they mean to 

 care for. To look to posterity is none of their business, neither do they 

 dream that retribution may ever visit them in their new abodes; and 

 perhaps it will not during their lifetime. 



But wherein does consist the gain, if the annexation of a new agri- 

 cultural district is analogous to the exhaustion and partial desertion of 

 another? What have Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, &c., gained by 

 the access and development of new Territories and States? Has the proc- 

 ess of exhaustion been retarded or checked in consequence? The popula- 

 tion, the fertility, produce, wealth, and general prosperity increased in 

 the ratio of her original capability? Not at all. The acquisition and oc- 

 cupation of new Territory has only tempted and enabled people to be 

 the more regardless of the mother State, and to quit it at the first signs 

 of its receding prosperity, or its slower progress. . . . 



That our great confederacy cannot, without serious, vital injury to 

 its imposing and still growing agricultural industrial and commercial in- 

 terests, long remain behind other countries in nursing that branch of the 

 natural sciences, which is the teacher, guide and benefactor of almost 

 every trade and craft, requires no argumentation in this place, nor do 

 we think to have failed to make it manifest, that no species of human 

 pursuit is more depending and more indebted to chemistry than the agri- 

 culture. Chemistry does not only give instruction to the farmer on every- 

 thing that there is, but it teaches him what is wanting, and how it can 

 be got. It makes known unto him the constituents in the composition of 

 the surface soil, its fertility in general, and its adaptability to certain 

 plants. It makes him acquainted with the proportiojis in which certain 

 constituent and fertilizing elements are contained in the soil; and with 

 the extent to which they are withdrawn from it, by each succeeding 

 crop, when he subjects the ashes to an analytical inquiry. It tells him 

 how far, and in which time a subsoil can be made capable of replacing 

 the withdrawn minerals, earths, and alkalies, and gives him the informa- 

 tion, whether this is to be effected by deep-ploughing, rotation, fallow, 

 irrigation, manuring, or any other contrivances or applications. It gives 

 him certain knowledge of the capability of a soil to absorb and to retain 

 moisture, and discloses unto him its power of capillary attraction. It 

 points out to him all the sources from which fertilizers or manures can 

 be drawn, and suggests the most practical and efficient modes as to the 

 quantities, forms and combinations, in which such fertilizers have to be 

 brought upon the field in order to restore it either to its former produc- 

 tivity or to increase the same, &c. 



These are but a few of the advantages and benefits to be derived 

 from an appeal to science, from an application of chemistry to the art 

 of [agrijculture. 



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