454 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



its incorporation ■with the surface soil is desirable ; what, if 

 any, applications are needed to render innocuous, or even 

 beneficial, deleterious substances that may exist in the soil. 

 The constituents of the desired crop being ascertained, it 

 enables us to decide what aliment will be required, and to dis- 

 cover whether or not the food is in the soil, and in sufficient 

 quantities, and if not, to supply it. 



AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTS. 

 From an Address before the Hampshire Society, Oct. 26, 1853. 



BY KEV. F. D. HUNTINGTON. 



The main oversight of the recent eiforts at improvement has 

 been a too hasty generalization, and a deficiency in patient 

 painstaking, accurate records of experiment. A few brilliant 

 announcements have dazzled our eyes ; sanguine lips have trum- 

 peted abroad spurious maxims ; and the golden age of great 

 profits and easy times has been heard knocking at the doors. 

 Following the explosion of this sophistry is apt to come a re- 

 action of discouragement, as unreasonable as the flattery. What 

 the interests of your profession seem to me to be imperatively 

 demanding just now, therefore, will be two things : 1. The 

 most rigid and thorough experiment, as to every detail and 

 particular of every mode of tillage, enriching and renewing of 

 lands, breeding of stock, and new implements, taking into ac- 

 count all the most minute and variable conditions, data and cir- 

 cumstances, attending that experiment : and 2. A faithful, exact, 

 and systematized registration of every such experiment, in- 

 cluding specific statements as to all the particulars alluded to. 

 This is that second stage, following the era of general discovery, 

 which agricultural improvement has next to pass through ; a 

 period of thorough experiment, and scrupulous registration. 

 Till we have the tests and tables only thus to be furnished, we 

 have no rational induction, and of course no development of 

 principles that will give us a proper science. The more exten- 

 sive and diversified these experiments on a given question are, 



