98 BIOGKAPHIES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN 



has been built up in every civilized country of the globe, 

 but especially in England. 



Liebig, like his own compatriot Heinrich Heine, could 

 handle the weapon of satire with consummate skill, 

 attacked England in the following words : " England is 

 robbing all other countries of the conditions of their 

 fertility. Already, in her eagerness for bones, she has 

 turned up the battlefields of Leipzig and Waterloo, and 

 of the Crimea ; already from the catacombs of Sicily 

 she has carried away the skeletons of many successive 

 generations. Annually she removes from the shores of 

 other countries to her own the manurial equivalent of 

 three millions and a half of men, whom she takes from 

 us the means of supporting, and squanders down her 

 sewers to the sea. Like a vampire she hangs upon the 

 neck of Europe, nay, of the entire world, and sucks the 

 heartblood from nations without a thought of justice 

 towards them, without a shadow of lasting advantage 

 for herself." 



His work revolutionized agriculture, and made a science 

 of it. He says in his Familiar Letters on Chemistry that 

 " chemistry leads man into the domain of those latent 

 forces, whose power controls the whole material world, 

 and on whose operation is dependent the production of 

 the most important necessaries of life and society. . . . 

 No science like chemistry offers to man such a multitude 

 of subjects for thought and reflection, and such stores 



