FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 423 



lifxiidlinG: of a lari^cr experience, and science in horse-training was quietly 

 shelved for that winter. 



This simple story has its counterpart in almost every art, and tliat because 

 of the so intimate relation of principles and practice, one everywiiere pervading 

 the otlier, whether riglitly recognized or not. 



A more striking proof of this intimate relation of science and the arts is 

 found in the fact that science often explains the reasons for a practical rule 

 long after the rule has become thoroughly established on the "cut and try" 

 method; while tlie arts furnish always tiio best of illustrations for science. 

 This fact shows mutual relations, not independence. Suppose agriculture to 

 be Avholly "an empirical art," that is, wrouglit out by experience of facts 

 alone through all the ages since men began to till the soil and wait for the 

 harvest. Still the principles of nature in turning soil and seed, sunshine and 

 shower, into produce underlie the whole, simplifying and unifying practice 

 whenever they can be discovered; and the abundant data of facts in these 

 practical rules must be a part of the information out of which science is 

 created. When both are made to unite in spirit and purpose, we may expect a 

 more definite and clearly developed art as well as more exact science. 



Such has been the tendency in other callings. The working of metals in its 

 recent perfections combines the older art and the newer sciences. The modern 

 dyes and pigments are results of a similar combination. The economy of great 

 manufactories, in which scarcely so much as the smoke is allowed to go to 

 waste, calls in the same assistance. The grand advance in perfection of 

 machinery is by acknowledgment of the same relationship. Even those won- 

 ders of inventive genius, which of late attract so much attention, are from the 

 same combination. 



Elislia Gray was a college-mate of mine, who earned his way more than half 

 through college by working at his trade of joiner, sliowing in liis scholarship a 

 decided scientific bias. He left his course to enter a business life too limited 

 to employ the full strength of his abilities; and so he let his mind run upon 

 some of the wants of the telegraph, applying his scientific bent and mechani- 

 cal skill to the catching and re-enforcing of feeble electric currents. His suc- 

 cess in a new relay magnet put him into the employ of the Western Union 

 Telegraph Company as inventor. What did he do? Shut himself into his 

 workshop that he might, like the boy with the fiddle, make his machines "out 

 of his own head." No; he studied and wrought together, mastered the knowl- 

 edge of others and experimented in the same lines, — in shore, trained himself 

 into a scientific observer in the field of galvanic electricity. After years of 

 such work, it was an accident that revealed to him the foundation facts of tel- 

 ephonic action, but an accident that could not have happened to any other one 

 not already so well versed in such matters. Then he made a study of his facts, 

 compared them with every other known phenomenon of similar nature, and so 

 mastered his subject that when he came to present it before Professor Tyndall, 

 the great authority in questions pertaining to sound, he was unabashed by even 

 the Professor's utter scepticism, for he knew how triumpliautly he should meet 

 it. Said he, when recounting this experience, "Invention requires a peculiar 

 training in minute scientific observation. It must be made a business by itself." 

 But for such a business, who cannot see tlie need of union between art and 

 science? 



Similar to this, undoubtedly, must be the later growth in all the arts. Sci- 

 ence extends the particulars of each and gives a firm foundation for future 

 progress, while the arts become the main support of science in its deeper inves- 



