32 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



just what kind of product will come from his machinery, the 

 quantity he will obtain, and what it will cost to produce it. If 

 his machinery goes wrong, he can stop it, and when he has once 

 learned to manufacture an article, he can go on indefinitely pro- 

 ducing exactly the same article. 



The farmer desires to manufacture potatoes. He deposits his 

 material — manure and seed — in the ground, and patiently waits 

 for the inscrutable machinery of sun and earth and air and wa- 

 ter to form his product. Over this machinery he has no control 

 whatever, and he cannot tell until harvest how much his product 

 will be, or what it will cost. And if he obtains a superior ar- 

 ticle, he is not certain that he can reproduce it. Just here arises 

 the uncertainty which surrounds the operations of the farmer. 

 It needs no argument to show that the man who desires to cul- 

 tivate the land intelligently, needs all the aid which science can 

 furnish ; and, indeed, science stops far short of his needs. He 

 cannot succeed unless his plans harmonize with the laws of light, 

 heat, growth and moisture, although he may be ignorant that 

 such laws exist. 



And here I would not be understood to advocate farming by 

 the book. Undoubtedly the man of science, who knows noth- 

 ing of practical husbandry, will, as a farmer, turn out to be a 

 splendid failure, and simply because his science does not go far 

 enough. Science is not yet sufficiently developed to enable him 

 to construct correct theories of agriculture. We know from 

 repeated observations that certain results usually follow certain 

 processes, but we cannot tell the " why or wherefore." We 

 know, for instance, that a small quantity of gypsum spread 

 upon certain lands produces a wonderful effect, while a like ap- 

 plication to other lands has not the slightest influence ; and yet 

 I believe no one has yet explained satisfactorily the mode in 

 which this fertilizer acts. 



Perhaps no men have rendered greater aid to agriculture than 

 Boussingault and Liebig, scholars of high scientific attainments, 

 but who applied their knowledge to the practical culture of the 

 land, for the purpose of ascertaining the laws which underlie the 

 hidden processes of vegetable life and growth. Men like these are 

 rendering the highest service to agriculture. Those who only 

 experiment in their laboratories, and write out theories for farm- 

 ers, based entirely on chemical analysis, are " blind leaders of the 



