228 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



and in the hour of its loftiest pride, must abase itself in the dust, 

 in the presence of that Omniscience before which all human 

 wisdom seems little more than ignorance and folly. 



Until Science will explain to me by what force I move my 

 muscles at my pleasure, what mind is, what matter is, what 

 knowledge itself is, and what are the records of memory, or even 

 aiford me some means of conjecture, I may be permitted to 

 demur to her loud notes of triumph, and to feel that there are 

 still many depths which the line of our philosophy has not yet 

 reached, and innumerable simple processes in nature, of daily 

 occurrence, which are utterly beyond our explanation. That 

 there is at work, in all animal and vegetable life, a vital agency, 

 who can entertain a doubt ? I do not know that it is not resolv 

 able into the principles of chemical solution and affinity, or into 

 electrical or galvanic agency ; but the assumption, in the present 

 state of science, would be, I think, premature, without stronger 

 grounds on which to rest it. 



XXX. ANALYSIS OF SOILS. 



In the chemical analysis of soils, likewise, upon which so 

 much stress is laid, there are difficulties, in the practical applica 

 tion of our knowledge, sufficiently discouraging. The complaint 

 lias been constantly and very emphatically made, that the 

 analyses of former chemists, such as Davy, Chaptal, and others, 

 were all too general, and therefore of little or no practical value. 

 It may be said of modern analyses, that they startle one by their 

 precision and minuteness. 



I shall be excused, I hope, if I endeavor to lessen somewhat 

 the dryness and dulness of these discussions, to my readers, by a 

 matter of fact, certainly not without its interest to me, and which 

 may bear some analogy to the case before us. Some years 

 since, when suffering under a severe illness for several months, 

 I was sometimes amused, as far as it was possible for me, under 

 such circumstances, to be amused, by the great, and I had almost 



