ADDRESS. Ivii 



dient ready for use. And here experimental researches, such as those con- 

 ducted on so extended and liberal a scale by Mr. Lawes and Dr. Gilbert, 

 come in aid of theory. They stand, as it were, midway between the abstract 

 principles which Science points out to the farmer, and the traditional usages 

 with respect to his art, which have been handed down to him from one gene- 

 ration to another. They bear the same relation to the farmer, which the 

 records of the clinical practice in a large in6rmary do, to the general princi- 

 ples of medicine expounded by the modern physiologist. 



It is true, that the experience of a particular hospital may not at all times 

 coincide with the anticipations which science holds out; but this discrepancy 

 only suggests to us the imperfection of our present knowledge, and is not 

 allowed to disturb the confidence of the physician in principles already esta- 

 blished on incontrovertible evidence. On the contrary, whilst he modifies 

 his practice from time to time by the experience he has gained by actual ob- 

 servation, he feels at the same time the fullest conviction, that these results 

 will be found eventually reconcileable with the general principles, which a 

 still more extended series of induction may have established. 



I need not occupy your time by applying the same method of proceeding 

 to the recent researches alluded to, but I will carry the analogy between the 

 science of Agriculture and of Therapeutics one step further. You may recol- 

 lect, that in a Report on the progress of husbandry, drawn up some years ago 

 by one of the most enlightened and zealous promoters of the agricultural 

 interest in Great Britain, now, alas I deceased, it was asserted, that chemistry 

 had done nothing for the farmer, except in teaching him to use sulphuric 

 acid with his bones, and to take advantage of the refuse flax liquor, formerly 

 thrown away and wasted. 



Now a statement of this kind, although it might be literally true in the 

 narrow sense in which the author doubtless intended it, namely, as referring 

 merely to the introduction of new specifics or recipes into farming, was 

 calculated, when put forth on such high authority, to foster that tendency in 

 the human mind to which we are all more or less prone, that of sparing our- 

 selves the trouble of thought and reflection in shaping the course of our con- 

 duct, by leaning blindly upon certain rigid and unvarying rules alreadj-- 

 chalked out to us by others. 



It was this propensity exercised upon moral subjects which has encumbered 

 our libraries with those vast tomes on casuistry, in which the conduct to be 

 pursued in each imaginable casie of conscience was attempted to be pre- 

 scribed; it was this which has driven many a patient to fly from the regular 

 practitioner into the arms of the homoeopathist, who professes to have a glo- 

 bule ready to meet every possible symptom. 



Grant that Science has as yet supplied us with only two infallible receipts 

 for the improvement of our land, the agricultural chemist may derive courage 

 from the reflection, that medicine too, since the days of Hippocrates, has 

 lighted only upon two or three specifics for the cure of disease ; and that the 

 most enlightened physicians of the present day, in the spirit which we would 

 fain see actuating the leaders of the agricultural body, depend not upon the 

 efficacy o^ nostrums, but upon their sagacity in referring the varying condi- 

 tions of each case which comes before them to those principles of physiology 

 which modern Science has established. 



And has not Science also unfolded principles which may be called in to 

 aid and direct the practical labours of the agriculturist ? 



I need not go further than the works of Baron Liebig for an answer to 

 this question. I may appeal, for instance, to the extensive employment of 

 guano at the present time, first introduced in England in consequence of his 



