SCIENCE AND AGRICULTURE. 7 



prosecuted with zeal, intelligence, and in the spirit of true 

 philosophy. 



I am not a believer in the immediate approach of an intellec 

 tual millennium ; nor can I persuade myself that philosophy has 

 just been born into the world, and that all preceding ages were 

 ages of comparative barbarism. It is true that the natural 

 sciences are now prosecuted with singular advantages and suc 

 cess ; that, in a particular manner, chemistry has, in a measure, 

 been created within the last half century ; and that it promises 

 to render the most essential aid to agriculture. Excepting, how 

 ever, the stimulus which it has every where given to inquiry 

 and observation, and the exact experiments which it is prompt 

 ing fanners even in the humblest departments of agriculture 

 to make, it cannot as yet point to very many positive practical 

 triumphs. Sanguine as I am, in common with others, in its ap 

 plication to agriculture, ultimately and perhaps speedily yielding 

 the most beneficial fruits, it has not yet even approached a solu 

 tion of many of the profound secrets of nature. Whether this 

 triumph is ever to be achieved by human sagacity ; whether, 

 with our present faculties, we are capable of entering into these 

 sacred mysteries, and of lifting up even a corner of the veil 

 which Heaven has drawn over them, it would be idle to conjec 

 ture : but they are, as yet, a sealed book to us. In the spirit of 

 the Book of books, &quot; Let us wait at Wisdom s gates, let us watch 

 at the posts of her doors ; &quot; let us knock, humbly hoping that 

 they may be opened to us. Those who have gone before us 

 have done the same, and were favored with many largesses, 

 which they have bequeathed to their children. Let us do them 

 justice by gratefully acknowledging our debt to them ; and not 

 wrap ourselves up, as we are very liable to do, in the vain con 

 ceit that they knew nothing, and that we know every thing. 



We talk about uniting science with agriculture, as if this were 

 the first time of asking the banns, when we may be sure the 

 marriage was consummated years and years ago. A science, 

 technically speaking, is a particular branch of human knowledge, 

 which has been systematized and drawn up in regular form ; its 

 particular principles and rules defined, its department circum 

 scribed, and its peculiar vocabulary arbitrarily established. In 

 this respect, chemistry, botany, and mechanics are sciences ; but 

 science, in an enlarged sense, is the observation of nature the 

 accumulation and comparison of facts, and the deduction of 



