EDITOEIAL. 405 



This further exposition of Doctor Thiel's views met with equal 

 dissension from the agricultural chemists, whose last reply he has 

 declined to discuss. The disagreement on the essential features of 

 organization for agricultural instruction seems to be complete. Some 

 good may, however, result from the airing which has been given 

 the subject. 



The proposal to divide up instruction in the principles of agri- 

 culture among the various primary sciences is a reversion to a plan 

 which was long tried abroad as well as in this country, and proved 

 entirely inadequate. The plan is not materially strengthened by 

 the supposition that these various sciences are to be taught in their 

 special relations to agriculture, for the limitations of the various 

 sciences considered individually would. still stand in the way. The 

 trouble lies with the attempt to classify agricultural instruction 

 solely on the basis of the fundamental sciences. 



A thorough grounding in the natural sciences is confessedly essen- 

 tial to thorough agricultural courses; but so long as the instruction 

 is confined to the departments of pure science it has had and will 

 have very little significance or importance to agriculture. The teach- 

 ing of the sciences in their relation and applications to agriculture 

 requires a broad outlook and a special point of view Avhich the 

 teacher of general science rarely if ever possesses. It requires sym- 

 pathetic relations with the various natural sciences, as well as with 

 the i^ractice of agriculture, for the problems are so complicated that 

 they overstep the boundaries of any single primary science. 



Agricultural chemistry, like agriculture, is a composite, and it 

 makes use of scientific facts outside the domain of chemistry. It 

 thus calls for broader interests and relationships, and for the special 

 ability to marshal the facts of general science and apply them to the 

 solution of agricultural problems. Analyze and separate it into the 

 primary sciences to be taught separately and independently by the 

 various departments, and we have destroyed the whole significance 

 and application of this knowledge as far as agriculture is concerned. 

 Either the various departments of science must do just what agri- 

 cultural chemistry has been doing — lap over into the adjoining 

 sciences and gather data to help explain certain principles and phe- 

 nomena, or the student must be left to work out these things for 

 himself — an impossible task. 



The case is no simpler with investigation. The attempt of the 

 botanist to work out the theory of plant nutrition would at once 

 lead him over into the fields of chemistry and other branches of 

 science, with Avhich he must needs form a combination quite as essen- 

 tially a " bastard " as Doctor Thiel declares agricultural chemistry 

 to be. It is the complicated character of problems of the soil, of 



