364 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



is but the classification of facts expressed in the shape of general rules 

 or laws. If any important fact be omitted in the process of induction 

 the result will be erroneous and calculated to mislead. But continued 

 experiment and investigation will eventually point out the omitted or 

 misplaced fact, and gradually a true science will grow up, rising from 

 the first rude attempts, through various gradations of improvement, 

 up to its highest and most perfect form. Results predicted from cer- 

 tain operations without due consideration and experience of all attend- 

 ing facts and circumstances, changes of soil and climate, would not be 

 verified except by the merest accident. But is it not plain that the 

 experiments here, disseminated throughout the country by appropri- 

 ate means and illuminated by all existing knowledge as to the influence 

 of varied circumstances, will be seized upon by the intelligent and 

 skillful agriculturist in all quarters and submitted to still further 

 tests in order to eliminate the ultimate truth — the most general law — 

 divested of all extraneous facts? The experiments made abroad will 

 be reflected back again to the central institution, and they will enable 

 it to correct its conclusions whenever these may have proved to be to 

 any extent erroneous. If this professorship should accomplish noth- 

 ing 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 agri- 

 culture 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 determines precisely the con- 

 trary; 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 car- 

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

 to the roots of the plant b}^ the loosened texture of the ground. Yet 

 when the agricultural chemist ascertains that the stalk, leaf, or grain 

 of any plant contains certain substances, 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 spe- 

 cies of information of the utmost importance, and applicable 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 ani- 

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

 for mutton, at his pleasure. 



