ADDRESSES 293 



agriculture in all its possible bearings is represented in 

 the publications, and hence the variety of the style of 

 its writings, suited to the education of an audience at 

 Oxford or a farmers' club. All things have been laid under 

 contribution and made to minister to it. The earth, the air, 

 and the water have in turn given up their secrets. Like the 

 All-seeing One, the hundred-eyed Argus of antiquity, or 

 Briareus of the hundred hands, it has suffered nothing to 

 escape its close scrutiny and inquiry. From the pure rain- 

 drops of heaven to the drainage waters of the earth, and 

 from the capture and imprisonment of the free nitrogen of 

 the atmosphere to the composition, utilization, and value 

 of town-sewerage, it questions them all; and whether they 

 answer in the tongue of the chemist, the botanist, or the 

 engineer, the answer has invariably been in the direct in- 

 terests of practical progressive agriculture. 



The value to agriculture of the work already accomplished 

 is well-nigh incalculable. Far less can be estimated that 

 of the future, for which, in the will of the generous founder, 

 ample provision has been made. Of its immediate import- 

 ance, English agriculturists speak in no uncertain terms. 

 The author of the "Pioneers and Progress of English Farm- 

 ing," referring to the experiments of Sir John Bennet 

 Lawes and Dr. Gilbert, says: "The triumph of chemistry 

 is summed up in the system of successive cropping without 

 impoverishment, which has been established by them. 

 It is difficult to estimate the enormous influence which 

 their experiments have already exercised upon farming, or 

 to assign limits to the increased productiveness of the soil 

 which England might have witnessed but for the disastrous 

 period of 1873-89." 



