424 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



tigations. Let no artisan forgot this oiieniug for a more perfect art ; nor let 

 him demand of science more tluui he gives in return by a generous sujiport and 

 a tlirifty following. Let no scientist alh)\v liis thoughts to overlook liis near- 

 est neighbor in his investigations, lest he lack the principal end and the princi- 

 pal means of his existence. 



I know that many practical men, and successful ones, too, gain little direct 

 aid from any science. Tiiey have their rules and tables, tools and instruments, 

 that, with a good degree of common sense, serve tiiem better than any smat- 

 tering of science that a few years of schooling could give. An excellent joiner 

 of my acquaintance undertook to study geometry ; but after a few lessons 

 threw it aside, "because it wasn't practical enougli." It didn't tell him just 

 how to cut his bevels for a hip in his ventilator hood, nor calculate for him the 

 curves of an irregular stairway. He had more useful books than any geometry. 

 Yet was it not by the exact reasoning of geometrical science that most of his 

 rules were established? and would not a clear conception of geometrical prin- 

 ciples give to those very rules a readier daily use with a larger chance for 

 proper variation to changed circumstances? A surveyor, with good instruments 

 and tables, may do much excellent work without a knowledge of trigonometry, 

 geometry, or any leading part of tlie mathematics u[)on which his art is 

 founded ; but who would trust him in any intricate problem? or how could he 

 expect to grow in power or to further his art? To be safe in his work, he must 

 be a mere machine worker all his days. If ambitious, he is likely to undertake 

 tasks in which he must fail, or in higher engineering to build structures like 

 the Ashtabula bridge, a trap for the innocent and a crime against humanity. 

 Business men discard the lengthy rules and principles of arithmetic, to use 

 interest tables and ready reckoners ; but would they deny the practical value of 

 arithmetic because a few of its applications can be kept on hand like ready- 

 made clothing? or would they expect a clerk unversed in arithmetic to be more 

 than a machine in his calculations? If a person witliout these foundations of 

 scientific truth ventures out of his routine, there is almost certain waste — at 

 least of his own energy. I knew an excellent man of some little ability and 

 general culture, who, with only tlie merest elements of geometry, spent the best 

 years of his life and the comfort of his family in trying to square the circle by 

 means of his rule and compasses. How many thousands have dreamed, if not 

 worked, over schemes for perpetual motion through application of gravity I 

 And yet a very elementary course in the science of mechanics proves the prob- 

 lem just as possible as "lifting yourself by your own boot-straps." A respected 

 friend of mine, a noted teacher in the days of the four rules, once built an 

 apparatus of pipes and a cask for making water flow from a well by force of 

 its own weight. A few small pipes up and larger but shorter ones down, 

 arranged alternately, and a cask with a faucet at the upper end assured a 

 greater weight of water on the shorter side. Filling the whole with water, and 

 turning the stop-cock, he expected to see it run on until the well was dry. He 

 thought it failed for want of air-tight joints, "for it made a terrible fizzing." 

 and for lifty years all his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have 

 failed to fully convince him otherwise. Such misconception is not uncommon 

 even with our more general dissemination of scientific truth. No doubt, if it 

 were announced in to-morrow's paper that Edison had invented a simple con- 

 trivance for making water run up hill with no expense of force, half the 

 readers would believe it. What a monument to sucii ignorance is found in the 

 piles of rejected applications in our Patent Ollice and in the museums of models 

 deposited throughout the land I That silly search of the ancients for "the 



