296 Agriculture and Chemistry. 
to have been done, how can we be so thoughtless as to hold 
out agricultural chemistry to farmers, as the means of aiding 
them in times like these, or affording them any hope on which 
they ought to be called upon to rely in the times that are to 
follow? Yet we shall doubtless again hear statesmen, who 
ought to be careful how they hold out delusive expectations 
to the farmers in such times as the present, speaking of the 
benefits which agricultural chemistry has conferred upon 
agriculture, although they themselves know nothing more of 
the matter than what they hear others, not very competent 
to give them information, state. Besides, even if agricultural 
chemistry had done what they suppose it to have done, but 
which any practical farmer knows it has not done, cannot 
other countries practice agricultural chemistry as well as we 
can do? It appears that there are amateur farmers, or sci- 
entific farmers as they call themselves, reverend doctors, and 
others, who are now hastening forward to announce to Govern- 
ment the great things now done by means of agricultural 
chemistry. They have doubled the number of their stacks, 
they tell us. Why, they might have done that without the 
help of chemistry at all. Every farmer knows that, by a 
large expenditure, he can increase the produce of his farm. 
But the farmer is compelled to compare the gain with the ex- 
penditure, and to limit the expenditure to what will afford him 
a return. No tenant-farmer can farm, as these reverend 
gentlemen propose, on a system of experiments. He must farm 
according to experience already acquired ; and experiments 
must be the exception, and not the rule, of any well-ordered 
farm. A tenant-farmer could not afford to farm for a single 
season on a system of experiments ; and, were he to farm as 
some of these reverend gentlemen are doing, he would pro- 
bably soon cease to be able to farm atall. These reverend 
gentlemen, to make their example worth quoting, should fur- 
nish us with the only document which can tell whether they 
have farmed well or ill,—namely, their account of profit and 
loss. But we may return to say, without even having seen 
these instructive documents, that not one in ten of these 
gentlemen has been paying half the expenses of his farm, not 
to speak of rent and profits of his capital in trade. (Professor 
Lon’s Appeal to the Common Sense of the Country.) ) 
