STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 123 



is better than or opposed to scientific investigation is a 

 sophist, "and the truth is not in him," because scientific 

 investigation is experience, is not opposed to, but harmonizes 

 with it, is not less, but rather greater than ordinary expe- 

 rience, since it expressly seeks to winnow away the error it 

 is well known so often accompanies truth; while experience 

 is many times unsuspecting, blind or prejudiced. 



If any one lets alone the results of scientific investigation, 

 to depend upon ordinary experience, he lets alone the oldest, 

 widest, fullest, most thoroughly criticised and truest expe- 

 rience wrought out in the lives of the world's most gifted and 

 most laborious men, to sustain himself upon the shallow, un- 

 sifted and conflicting experience of those less qualified to 

 observe and judge. Science is but another and the true name 

 for all that is good in the experience of all men; and bears 

 the same relation to ordinary experience that the clean grain 

 does to the crop in the field, where there is chaff, straw, stubble, 

 roots and weeds. Common experience is the native, rank, but 

 wild, growth of knowledge. Science is its trained and culti- 

 vated development. Common experience is swaying to and 

 fro with every wind of doctrine, unsettled, unreliable; here 

 asserting a thing, there denying it; now believing, now skep- 

 tical. But scientific experience is that whereon one may most 

 surely rest, for it reveals the changeless and perfect laws, in 

 whose obedience Nature glorifies her Author. 



Your correspondent derives his estimate of the value of 

 American guano from experience. That is precisely the 

 source whence mine is derived. lie asserts that "the experi- 

 ments made by farmers with this guano prove it to be the 

 most valuable fertilizer ever brought into this country." I 

 am prepared to show the experience of agriculture has not 

 proved this statement true. I am confident that overwhelm- 

 ing evidence can be produced to the contrary, and am ready 

 to discuss that point with him or any one. Your correspond- 

 ent believes that the natural combination of the phosphates 

 and sulphates of lime, is a reason why the American guano 



