402 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



to be to any extent erroneous. If this professorship should 

 accomplish nothing more than to point out the mode of 

 investigation to be adopted, and to compare the results in 

 different quarters and give information of them, this of itself 

 would be an essential service to agriculture. 



It will not be disputed, however, that there are some 

 things in agriculture of a general nature, which science at 

 any place can determine with absolute certainty. One 

 might theorize in reference to processes of cultivation, and 

 the results would be very generally erroneous. It might be 

 plausibly argued, that to disturb and break the roots of a 

 stalk of corn by the usual mode of cultivation must injure 

 the health and produce of the plant. But experience de- 

 termines precisely the contrary ; whether it be that new and 

 more numerous small roots are put out, penetrating to every 

 part of the soil, and thereby obtaining abundant nutriment, 

 or whether it be simply that the oxygen and carbonic acid 

 gas of the air and of the soil are rendered more accessible 

 to the roots of the plant by the loosened texture of the 

 ground. Yet, when the agricultural chemist ascertains that 

 the stalk, leaf, or grain of any plant contains certain sub- 

 stances, the silicates, phosphates, or carbonates, and that 

 these are indispensable to their perfection, he is enabled to 

 predicate with absolute certainty that these substances must 

 be in the soil, or that the plant will not flourish. This is a 

 species of information of the utmost importance, and appli- 

 cable under all circumstances, and in all climates. In its 

 perfect form, when science shall have expended her fruitful 

 labor upon it, it will enable the farmer to control the growth 

 of his crop, and give it any desired development, just as he 

 now controls the growth of his domestic animals, raising 

 his cattle for milk or for beef, and his sheep for wool or for 

 mutton, at his pleasure. 



I would say, sir, in reference to this, what I have said of 

 another branch of science, and, indeed, what may be said 

 of all knowledge that it is impossible to foresee the great 

 results to which they will lead. I have unbounded faith in 

 the resources of science in all her departments ; and I look 

 forward with the expectation of discoveries and improve- 

 ments far more important and wonderful than anything 

 which has yet been accomplished. The magnetic telegraph 

 is a marvel; but it does not mark the extreme boundary of 

 human ingenuity. 



Another leading and important feature in this bill is, that 

 it proposes " a professor of common school instruction, 

 with other professors, chiefly of the more useful sciences 



