152 On the Application 



It is only, therefore, to the neglect of this material in places 

 where it can be obtained cheaply and abundantly, that my obser- 

 vations apply ; but they may at least serve to suggest to us the 

 advantages of making all the use of it we can, and of endeavour- 

 ing to reduce what we have in excess to a condition in which it 

 may be conveniently transported to a distance. 



The means of preserving and rendering portable the night-soil 

 and other impurities of a great metropolis, as well as the various 

 expedients by which farm-yard manure may be applied to the 

 best advantage, and its volatile parts either retained or slowly dis- 

 engaged, as occasion may require, would alone afford us materials 

 for another lecture — in the present I only allude to these topics 

 as additional proofs of the advantages that would accrue, from 

 having some amount of chemical knowledge diffused generally 

 throughout the agricultural community. 



But how is this important point to be secured ? The present 

 generation of farmers, living, as they often do, at a distance from 

 the great emporiums of science, and being in all cases engrossed 

 by the daily routine of practical avocations, can hardly find much 

 time to devote to the acquisition of theoretical knowledge ; and of 

 them all perhaps that can be .expected is, that they should arrive 

 at a sense of its value, coupled with a desire, that those who follow 

 their footsteps may possess that information in which they feel 

 their own deficiency. 



It is to the rising generation that we must principally look for 

 improving the practice of husbandry by a due attention to its 

 jyrincijjles ; and this can only be brought about by instilling into 

 the minds of those at least amongst their number who look for- 

 ward to the management of large estates, either of their own or of 

 others, the elements of physical science, at a period of life when 

 the attention is most awake, and the thoughts unoccupied by more 

 imperious duties. 



It is remarkable that, of all the nations of civilised Europe, 

 England is perhaps the only one which is destitute of any public 

 establishment for the instruction of those designed for agriculture, 

 although two centuries ago the poet Cowley was alive to its im- 

 portance, as, in one of his prose essays, he strongly recommends 

 the erection of a College in each of our Universities, for the 

 express purpose of educating those who were to be trained to 

 husbandry in the several arts of aration, pasturage, gardening, 

 and rural economy. 



In France the establishment of Grignon, near Paris, supplies 

 means of instruction for more than a hundred pupils in the 

 elements of physics, in chemistry, in botany, in other branches of 

 natural history, and in the veterinary art. In the kingdom of 

 Wirtemburg, that of Hohenheim near Stuttgard, to which is 



