948 Agricultural Journal of Victoria. 



tlie prosperity of your future than any other science. It will be of 

 interest and vakie to trace the growth and influence of a branch of 

 human inquiry which has so profoundly affected the calling you 

 follow. 



The establishment of agricultural chemistry as a separate depart- 

 ment of science dates from the commencement of last century 

 only. One hundred years is a short span, measured even by the 

 lengtli of our civilization ; and yet nearly the whole of that great mass 

 of facts, which we include in the term agricultural chemistry, is the 

 result of the labors of the great investigators who lived from the 

 commencement of last century down to our own period. A review of 

 the discoveries of that period will, perhaps, afford the farmer a clearer 

 picture of what science has done, and may do for him, than the history 

 of the accomplishments of any other separate department of inquiry. 

 To learn and understand the links of connection between only one 

 department of science and the actual practice of farm life, will help in 

 the realisation, by you, of one great fact which might modify your 

 whole mental attitude towards the subject generally. The fact I 

 refer to is, that no rational system of agriculture is anywhere possible 

 without the application of truly scientific principles. 



To draw comparisons between the condition of agricultural 

 chemistry at the present day, and its condition at the commencement 

 of last century, there must be clear ideas of the functions of this 

 branch of science. To the great Englishman, Davey, belongs the 

 credit of first establishing agricultural chemistry as a separate 

 department of science ; and although the earlier investigations of his 

 predecessors helped him and the later inquiries of his successors 

 considerably overshadowed his work, we can all, I think, feel proud 

 of the share he took in establishing the fact of the intimate relations 

 existing between chemistry and agriculture. In a comparison of his 

 teachings with the knowledge of to-day, will be revealed the great 

 gulf which separates our position, in this respect, from that of his time. 



You will recognise that chemistry, as related to agriculture, has its 

 well defined activities in laboratory, field, stall and factory ; and in 

 each of these spheres investigation during the last hundred years has 

 revealed such an accumulation of facts, as to lift our agriculture of 

 to-day into a calling founded on truly scientific principles, as opposed 

 to the empiricism of the earlier period. The first task which would 

 naturally suggest itself to chemistry, in its relation to agriculture, would 

 be the investigation of the soil, its composition and changes; and even 

 at the commencement of the nineteenth century some little pi'ogress 

 had been made in this direction. But chemistry at that time had all its 

 great unsolved problems before it. It required to take up the study 

 of the plant ; to investigate the principles of nutrition, both by field 

 experiment and laboratory test, and to establish the relations of the 

 soil to the plant. It required to carry out a similar line of inquiiy 

 with regard to the live stock of the farm ; to determine the principles 

 of animal nutrition and establish a system of feeding on a scientific 

 basis. The new facts, gained by these investigations, suggested new 



