288 Agriculture and Chemistry. 
the harrow, the spade, and the hoe, were known from the 
earliest times, and to every people emerged from barbarism. 
Our Roman instructors had really left us less to learn than 
many persons are aware of. They were familiar with the 
use and preparation of the most useful manures, whether mi- 
neral or derived from plants and animals; with the practice 
of sowing the cultivated crops in rows, and hoeing them 
during their growth, which many suppose to be a modern 
discovery ; with the suitable modes of cultivating the plants 
yet most generally grown, with the exception of rice, which 
was derived from the countries of the East, and of maize, 
which has been derived from the New World. They were ac- 
quainted with the order in which the cultivated plants should 
follow one another on the same ground, which we call the ro- 
tation of crops; with the modes of preparing the summer fal- 
low, and the green or fallow crops ; with draining, irrigating, 
and other branches of rural labour. Or if we shall go farther 
back still, long ere the City of the Seven Hills had even a 
name, we shall find that the most necessary labours of the 
field were known and practised. In the ruined monuments 
of Egypt, we see, as fresh as if they were sculptured yester- 
day, the labours of rural life depicted to us. Agriculture 
being thus early pursued, it has probably left less for science 
to add to truths before known than almost any of the other 
useful arts. But let us not draw, from this fact, conclusions 
which the history of the arts themselves does not warrant. 
If the origin of agriculture was in the rudest school of prac- 
tice, and if its subsequent advances have been made by mere 
additions to experience acquired, it may not the less be that 
its ultimate triumph shall be due to science. 
Of the sciences, Chemistry seems to be that which has the — 
most immediate relation to Agriculture. The nature of the 
soil, its composition and properties, and the relations be- 
tween it and the plants which it produces ; and the composi- 
tion of manures, and their modes of action, and the best 
means of using them; seem to bring agriculture in an espe- 
cial manner within the domain of chemical research. Fur- 
ther, chemistry has been applied with the happiest results to 
numerous arts, as to that of the metallurgist, the dyer, the 
