18 HOW CROPS GROW. 



ging, planting, manuring, and irrigating, had their suffi 

 cient reason for every step. In all cases, thought goes 

 before work, and the intelligent workman always lias a 

 theory upon which his practice is planned. No farm 

 was ever conducted with jut physiology, chemistry, and 

 physics, any more than an aqueduct or a railway WFS ever 

 built without mathematics and mechanics. Every success 

 ful fanner is, tc some extent, a scientific man. Let him 

 throw away the knowledge of facts and the knowledge of 

 principles which constitute his science, and he has lost the 

 elements of his success. The farmer without his reasons, 

 his theory, his science, can have no plan ; and these want 

 ing, agriculture would be as complete a failure with him 

 as it would be with a man of mere science, destitute of 

 manual, financial, and executive skill. 



Other qualifications being equal, the more advanced and 

 complete the theory of which the farmer is the master, the 

 more successful must be his farming. The more he knows, 

 the more he can do. The more deeply, comprehensively, 

 and clearly he can think, the more economically and ad 

 vantageously can he work. 



That there is any opposition or conflict between science 

 and art, between theory and practice, is a delusive error. 

 They are, as they ever have been and ever must be, in the 

 fullest harmony. If they appear to jar or stand in con 

 tradiction, it is because we have something false or incom 

 plete in what we call our science or our art ; or else we do not 

 percoive correctly, but are misled by the narrowness and 

 aberrations of our vision. It is often said of a machine, 

 that it was good in theory, but failed in practice. This is 

 as untrue as untrue can be. If a machine has failed in 

 practice, it is because it was imperfect in theory. It should 

 be said of such n failure the machine was good, judged 

 by the best theory known to its inventor, but its incapacity 

 tc work demonstrates that the theory had a flaw. 



But, although art and science aro hus inseparable, it 



