TEACH AS TO FARMING. 11 



within your reach, but don't talk to us about Agricultural Science. 

 Growing good crops is the Farmer's vocation, and in this pursuit 

 experience is always a safe guide ; not so what is called Science, 

 which often misleads and impoverishes." 



Let us consider : 



Of course, there is much Science so-called, which is false Sci- 

 ence the brain-spun speculations and subtleties of idle and fan- 

 ciful people, anxious to account for phenomena which they do not 



really understand. No one considers such Science worth any- 

 thing; and it is one of the chief recommendations of true 

 Science that it enables men to detect the pretender and unmask 

 him. But Science implies a knowledge >f Nature and her immu- 

 table Laws; and who can seriously doubt the importance of this 

 to the Farmer? For instan- 



We all know that a field of one hundred acres entirely devoted 

 during five successive years to a rotation of Corn, Oats, Clover, 

 Potatoes and Wheat respectively. \vuill yield a far greater product 

 than would that same field if divided into live emial parts and 

 each devoted to some one of the-e products for live years in suc- 

 cession. Experience had settled thi-<. before Science was allowed 

 to say anything about it. When at last interrogated, for tin- rear 

 son or law which underlies this fa<-t, Science made answer that 

 each plant requires and e\a-t> its peculiar nutriment, and that 

 this is relatively if not absolutely e\hau>ted by growing that crop 

 on the same land year after year. It m;.y !> that the five plants 

 above named all require Lime, Potash, Phosphorus, Ammo- 

 nia, Carbon, &e., which, beside Water, are the chief elements of 

 vegetable structure ; but, if so, they require them in very un- 

 equal proportions or quantities. Grown each on its own twenty 

 acres throughout the five years, one will have exhausted the 

 Lime, yet have an abundance of Phosphorus left ; another will 

 have absorbed all the Potash in its division, yet hardly tasted the 

 Lime ; and so on ; while, had the hundred acres been sown in rota- 

 tion or succession entirely to one and then to another of these 

 crops, or had the five been alternated from portion to portio* 



