CHEMISTRY AND FARMING. 295 



CHEMISTRY AND FARMING 



From an Address before the Essex Society. 



BT JAMES R. NICHOLS, M. D. 



In considering what chemistry has taught the farmer, we 

 must not, in our eagerness to learn the practical benefits of its 

 teachings, overlook that accumulation of beautiful and im- 

 portant facts, which unfolds the philosophy of the origin, the 

 structure, and the growth of plants. In darkness intense as 

 midnight was this kind of knowledge involved, and it was only 

 by the light of those fires in which were buried the crucibles of 

 the chemist, that tlie dark cloud was pierced and all around 

 and beneath illuminated. 



The whole operation and growth of a plant is strictly a chem- 

 ical problem, and intimate indeed is the connection of the soil 

 cultivator with its germination and growth. He is not the 

 chemist that actually produces the plant. The unseen ma- 

 nipulator, whom we designate the " vital force," is the chemist 

 who does the work, and whose amazing skill exceeds all human 

 capability. His laboratory is no circumscribed one, bounded 

 by partitions of wood and stone, but its area extends farther 

 than the eye can reach, and its enclosing wall is the great ro- 

 tunda whose span stretches beyond even the imagination of 

 men. 



You, gentlemen, stand within this great rotunda, and in the 

 immediate presence of the great Chemist, who calls upon you 

 to aid him in his work. Day by day you witness his marvelous 

 power, in calling from the slnmbering earth the tender blade of 

 grass, the beautiful flower, the useful cereal and leguminous 

 plants, the creeping vine and the spreading oak of the forest. 



You can promote or you can destroy, the work of the sublime 

 Creator and Architect. You can retard, or facilitate, the 



