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agricultural improvements of great and decided advantage extend them- 

 selves, even into neighboring districts, ai'e well known and sufficiently 

 remarkable. Something of this has been owing to the stationary habits 

 of farmers, to a want of education, and neglect of reading and inquiry 

 necessarily growing out of this ; and much to prejudice, the natural 

 child of ignorance, against scientific suggestions and the application of 

 science to an art which, so far as they are concerned, is wholly of a 

 practical character. This prejudice against the applications of science 

 to agriculture, or to what in vulgar parlance is called hook-farmings 

 has, we confess, found some natural encouragement in the fact, that 

 many persons, wholly destitute of practical knowledge and skill, have 

 undertaken to apply purely theoretical rules, without regard to ditlerenc- 

 es of soil, climate, nature of the crop, and nameless circumstances by 

 which the application of these rules should be varied, or might be- 

 come unseasonable or futile ; and that in truth, many persons have un- 

 dertaken to make books, and to give directions in husbandry, who were 

 grossly ignorant of its great principles, and possessed little knowledge 

 of its various practical details and rules. It must at the same time be 

 admitted, that science has accomplished comparatively little ; and that, 

 beyond that knowledge which any intelligent, practical and experienced 

 man easily and almost necessarily acquires of soils, manures, vegeta- 

 tion and crops, little has been ascertained of a practical value ; and the 

 profound secrets of vegetable life, or what is properly termed vital ac- 

 tion in vegetable organism and growth, remain in all their original ab- 

 struseness and mystery. The little success therefore which scientific 

 men have had in their attempts to resolve and explain them, and espe- 

 cially the little practical utility which has come from their theoretical 

 explanations, have created, with the purely practical, a prejudice against 

 such inquiries as invincible as it is unworthy of sensible men. 



But it will not be denied, in this case, that we know as much of veg- 

 etable as we know of animal life. Anatomy may be termed an ex- 

 act science ; it is to a great extent matter of sensible observation and 

 measurement ; but the operations in the human organism, which are 

 strictly vital, are altogether undisclosed. We know in truth as much 

 how the stems and leaves and fruit are formed and perfected, as we 

 know how the food, which we receive, is converted into blood, and 

 serum, and bile, and muscle, and fibre, and tendon, and bone ; and we 

 know no more. Shall we despair of going further } By no means. 

 There seems, indeed, in this case, to be a limit to inquiry ; an impassa- 



