No. 6. DEPAiriMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 66& 



In a very large measure, this new attitude has been made possible 

 hy reasou of Ibe developuu'ut ot the science of chemistry, that science 

 which deals with the fuiidauieutal nature of matter and its conver- 

 sion from one form imto another. In malciug this statement, 1 would 

 not be understood as belittiiug the importance of those sciences 

 which deal with the facts and underlying- laws relating to the form, 

 movement and vigor of the living agents, including not only the com- 

 mon crops and domestic animals, but the microscopic forms of mat- 

 ter upon whose aid the farmer is dependent for the attainment of 

 his results. Ko theory of production which fails to take into ac- 

 count each of these classes of facts and sets of principles would offer 

 a practicable method for use in the art of agriculture; but from the 

 fact that the transformations effected on the farm and in the stable 

 are essentially changes in the kind of matter, and since the realm 

 of chemical force has been widely extended into the territory of plant 

 and animal life, it may safely be asserted that the facts and princi- 

 ples in chemical science have exercised a preponderant influence in 

 the agricultural scientific development of the nineteenth century. 



At the beginning of this period, the reasons underlying agricul- 

 tural operations in the held and the principles of feeding were 

 scarcely more scientitic than those which prevailed in the best days 

 of Roman agriculture. The study of botany had resulted in a bet- 

 ter knowledge of specific form of plants and the study of zoology, 

 more recently developed, had led to a similar condition of informa- 

 tion respecting the forms of animal life that were distinctly visible 

 to the naked eye. The art of the horticulturist, with certain general 

 rules governing the practice of the breeding of plants and the con- 

 trol of their development by the operations of grafting, etc., had led 

 the florist, the fruit grower and, to somewhat less degree, the pro- 

 ducer of field crops to a sense of some mastery over the form of his 

 vegetable products; and at the close of the eighteenth century, the 

 principles of heredity governing the form, vigor, special productive 

 capacity and fixity of type among domestic animals had also come to 

 be understood by a few of the more intelligent stockmen; but con- 

 cerning the general nature; and transformations of matter occurring 

 in the soil and in plants and animals, almost nothing was known. 

 Evidently no intelligent conception of this class of facts was possi- 

 ble until a correct fundamental theory of the chemical nature of mat- 

 ter and its changes had been developed and accepted; and it was not 

 until the opening of the nineteenth century that the fundamental 

 conceptions of the indestructibility of matter, and of weight as a 

 permanent measure of mass were clearly stated and generally ac- 

 cepted. At this time, also, by general consent, the phenomena in 

 plants and animals were ascribed to the action of the mysterious 

 vital force, supposed to have little or nothing in common with the 



