On the j^pjjlication of Science to Agriculture. 137 



which this Institution is designed to foster, it may doubtless appear 

 to many of you that I have undertaken a task, and am occupying 

 a position, which neither my previous studies nor my present 

 occupations justify me in assuming. For one indeed like myself, 

 whose personal experience on matters of rural economy is nearly 

 limited to the narrow precincts of a garden, to attempt instructing 

 such an Assembly as the present on the conduct of operations with 

 which many of those who constitute it have been familiar from 

 their earliest years, and which in every case must form the subject 

 of their daily thoughts and occupations, I should indeed regard as 

 the extreme of presumption, were it not for the reflection, that the 

 Society before which I now appear is expressly instituted for the 

 purpose of connecting science with practice, and of summoning to 

 the support of the agriculture of this country all the supplementary 

 aid which either geology, botany, or chemistry may be capable of 

 affording it. 



As, therefore, on the former evening, you listened with in- 

 terest to a Professor of a sister University, when discoursing on 

 subjects respecting which his own exact botanical knowledge, and 

 his general acquaintance with the proper methods of experiment- 

 ing, enabled him, though not a practical farmer, to speak with 

 something Kke authority — so, on the present, it shall be my 

 humble endeavour to bring under your consideration those de- 

 partments of agricultural inquiry, upon which the science of 

 chemistry either has thrown, or seems likely to throw important 



light. 



Proceeding, however, in that cautious spirit which ought to be 

 our guide in matters of such great practical moment, a spirit too 

 which is expressly inculcated by the Society whose members I 

 now address, it is not my intention to prescribe to you any parti- 

 cular modes of culture, even in cases where I may conceive that 

 the present system runs counter to approved principles of science 

 — but I would rather wish to suggest doubts, to pave the way to 

 new lines of investigation, and to point out the manner in which 

 those experiments which you are undertaking ought to be prose- 

 cuted, so as to produce results most useful to the public and to 

 yourselves. 



Few, indeed, who recollect the opposite systems of farming 

 pursued in various parts of England, often without any corre- 

 sponding variations in soil and climate to account for them, who 

 consider the unequal amount of produce obtained from land of 

 apparently similar quality in different situations, and are re- 

 minded of the superiority in certain points of husbandry which 

 must be conceded to nations inferior to our own in the scale of 

 civilisation, will doubt that the agriculture of this country is far 

 indeed removed from perfection ; and as no fault can be found 



