238 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the books of the ancient farmers, because they laid down no 

 laws, and could therefore be of no use to any man. How he 

 would have rejoiced in Franklin who caught, and Morse who 

 used the lightning ; in Brancas who discovered the power of 

 steam, and Watt and Fulton who applied it ; in James Smith, 

 of Deanston, who invented tile drainage, and in John Johnston, 

 of New York, who has employed it in a successful warfare 

 against drought and flood, and the wheat-midge ; in Count 

 Rumford, who, having made a profound study of the theory of 

 heat, set himself at work inventing fire-places, and grates, and 

 ovens, and cooking-ranges, and founded a professorship of the 

 application of science to the art of living ; in Agassiz, who, 

 having studied botany with Martius, and the embryonic devel- 

 opment of animals with Dollinger, and the principles of clas- 

 sification with Oken, and zoology with Cuvier, joined hands 

 with the farmers of Massachusetts in their investigations of 

 soils, and crops, and animals, and taught the fish commissioners 

 of Massachusetts how to stock the lakes and rivers of that 

 industrious and enterprising Commonwealth ! What an admi- 

 rable professor in a school of technology Bacon would have 

 made ! What an efficient and accomplished president of a 

 model agricultural college ! 



When Lord Bacon introduced the demands of common sense, 

 and the principles of common honesty, into philosophical reason- 

 ing and investigation, when the student of nature adopted .the 

 motto of " Nullus in verba" and listened only to the result 

 of experiments, or to the unerring mathematical deduction 

 from those results, then the temple of science was raised with 

 rapidity and triumph, by the accumulation of facts upon facts, 

 which were firmly cemented by the strictest reasoning. And 

 then the emancipation of science was achieved, and that strug- 

 gle began which, in various forms, has continued to this day. 

 And what an era of emancipation was that in which Bacon 

 wrought ! Everywhere the bonds which had bound man's soul 

 seemed to be breaking. Between the birth and death of Bacon, 

 America opened her arms, to receive the oppressed and per- 

 secuted. The Huguenots brought their protesting faith to our 

 southern shores. The Puritans, who had kindled and pre- 

 served the " precious spark of liberty " in England, having 

 sought shelter in vain in the Old World, braved the dangers of 



