80 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



into a cheese. The Laplanders manufacture a species of cheese ol 

 the milk of their reindeer which is not only of great service to them 

 as food, but also for a variety of other purposes connected with 

 domestic economy. 



CHEMISTRY. Is an instructive, interesting and valuable sci- 

 ence. Within the last hundred years its empire has been wonderfully 

 extended. There is scarcely an art of human life which it is not 

 fitted to subserve ; scarcely a department of human inquiry or labor, 

 either for health, pleasure, ornament, or profit, which it may not be 

 made in its present improved state, eminently to promote. To the 

 husbandman this science furnishes principles and agents of inestima- 

 ble value. It teaches him the food of plants, the choice and use of 

 manures, and the best means of promoting the vigor, growth, produc- 

 tiveness, and preservation of the various vegetable tribes. To the 

 manufacturer chemistry has lately become equally fruitful of instruc- 

 tion and assistance. In the arts of brewing tanning, dyeing, and 

 bleaching, its doctrines are important guides. In making soap, glass, 

 pottery, and all metallic wares, its principles are daily applied, and 

 are capable of a still more useful application, as they become better 

 understood. Indeed, every mechanic art, in the different processes 

 of which heat, moisture, solution, mixture, or fermentation is neces- 

 sary, must ever keep pace in improvement with this branch of philoso- 

 phy. To the physician this science is of still greater value, and is 

 daily growing in importance. He learns from it to compound his 

 medicines, to disarm poisons of their force, to adjust remedies to dis- 

 eases, and to adopt general means of preserving health. 



Finally, to the domestic economist this science abounds with plea- 

 sing and wholesome lessons. It enables him to make a proper choice 

 of meats and drinks ; it directs him to those measures with respect 

 to food, clothing, and respiration, which have the best tendency to 

 promote health, enjoyment, and cheapness of living ; and it sets him 

 on his guard against many unseen evils, to which those who are ig- 

 norant of its laws are continually exposed. In a word, from a spec- 

 ulative science, chemistry, since the middle of the eighteenth century, 

 has become eminently and extensively a practical one. From an 

 obscure, humble, and uninteresting place among the objects of study, 

 it has risen to high and dignified station ; and instead of merely 

 gratifying curiosity, or furnishing amusement, it promises a degree of 

 utility, of which no one can calculate the consequences or see the end. 



The object of chemistry is to ascertain the ingredients of which 

 bodies are composed, to examine the compounds formed by those in- 

 gredients, and to investigate the nature of the power which produ- 

 ces these combinations. The science therefore naturally divides itself 

 into three parts ; a description of the component parts of bodies, or of 

 elementary or simple substances as they are called a description of 

 the compound bodies formed by the union of simple substances and 



