298 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANURING ORCHARDS. 



give us a new key to power, in our attempts 

 to gain the mastery over matter, and we 

 are continually on the alert to verify and 

 put in practice our newly acquired know- 

 ledge, or to add in every possihle way to 

 the old stock. Men are no longer contented 

 to reap short crops from worn out soil. 

 They look for scientific means of renovating 

 it. They would make the earth do its ut- 

 most. Agriculture is thus losing its old 

 character of being merely physical drudge- 

 ry, and is rapidly becoming a science, full 

 of profound interest, as well as a grand 

 practical art, which, Atlas-like, bears the 

 burden of the world on its back. 



It is not to be denied that chemistry is 

 the great railroad which has lately been 

 opened, graded and partially set in opera- 

 tion, to facilitate progress through that wide 

 and comparatively unexplored territory — 

 scientific cultivation : chemistry, which has 

 scrutinised and analysed till she has made 

 many things, formerly doubtful and hidden, 

 as clear as noon-day. And it is by watch- 

 ing her movements closely, by testing her 

 theories by practice, by seizing every valu- 

 able suggestion, and working out her pro- 

 blems patiently and fairly, that the cultiva- 

 tor is mainly to hope for progress in the 

 future. 



No one who applies his reasoning powers 

 to the subject will fail to see, also, how 

 many interesting points are yet in obscurity; 

 how many important facts are only just be- 

 ginning to dawn upon the patient investi- 

 gator ; how much is yet to be learned only 

 by repeated experiments ; and how many 

 fail who expect to get immediate replies 

 from nature, to questions whose satisfac- 

 tory solution must depend upon a variety 

 of preliminary knowledge, only to be ga- 

 thered slowly and patiently, by those who 

 are unceasing in their devotion to her 

 teachings. 



There are no means of calculating how 

 much chemistry has done for agriculture 

 within the last ten years. We say this, not 

 in the sanguine spirit of one who reads a 

 volume on agricultural chemistry for the first 

 time, and imagines that by the applica- 

 tion of a few salts he can directly change 

 barren fields into fertile bottoms, and raise 

 100 bushels of corn where 20 grew before. 

 But we say it after no little observation of 

 the results of experimental farming — full 

 of failures and errors, with only occasional 

 examples of brilliant success — as it is. 



There are numbers of readers who, see- 

 ing the partial operations of nature laid 

 bare, imagine that the whole secret of as- 

 similation is discovered, and by taking too 

 short a route to the end in view, they de- 

 stroy all. They may be likened to those 

 intellectual sluggards who are captivated by 

 certain easy roads to learning, the gates of 

 which are kept by those who teach every 

 branch of human wisdom in six lessons I 

 This gallop into the futurity of laborious 

 effort, generally produces a giddiness that 

 is almost equivalent to the obliteration of 

 all one's power of discernment. And though 

 one may, now, by the aid of magnetism, 

 " put a girdle round the earth" in less than 

 " forty minutes," there are still conditions 

 of nature that imperiously demand time 

 and space. 



Granting, therefore, that there are hun- 

 dreds who have failed in their experiments 

 with agricultural chemistry, still we con- 

 tend that there are a few of the more skil- 

 ful and thorough experimenters who have 

 been eminently successful ; and whose suc- 

 cess will gradually form the basis of a new 

 and improved system of agriculture. 



More than this, the attention which has 

 been drawn to the value of careful and in- 

 telligent culture, is producing indirectly the 

 most valuable results. Twenty years ago 



