PROF. C. U. SHEPHARD'S ADDRESS. 251 



a force far less under our power to control, than maybe required 

 to suspend a body from falling to the earth ; that the new bodies, 

 again, possess a similar power, among themselves, of uniting to 

 produce a higher order of compounds; that in all these, the ele- 

 ments are present in proportions never varying by the minutest 

 fraction; and finally, that all compounds, whether natural or 

 artificial, whether the products of the mineral kingdom or built 

 up under the influence of vitality, are liable to be subverted 

 in their composition, and to have their elements collocated anew, 

 simply by the presence of other forms of matter, or the influ- 

 ence of heat, light, electricity, or the living principle itself. 



Without these ideas, fundamental as they are to an intelli- 

 gence of the source and origin of soils, and the separate agen- 

 cies of earth, air, and water, in vegetable growth, the whole art 

 of the husbandman is one of the blindest enigmas ever presented 

 to the human mind ; and no wonder is it, in such a case, that 

 the bulk of mankind regard the disguised forms in which the 

 elements present themselves, in ordinary vegetable growths, as 

 independent, original shapes, created by the vital principle out- 

 right ; for what other more rational view is there left to the 

 man, who plants a kernel of corn, and who knows not of the 

 fifteen elements of matter that are requisite to the formation of 

 the perfect stalk and full-grown ear — which, and how many, find 

 access by the root, and which by the blade — who discerns neith- 

 er the routes by which they enter, nor the shapes in which they 

 come. What is more natural than for such a mind to conclude, 

 that the seed planted possesses, in some way, the power, under 

 the favoring stimulus of a rich soil and a genial temperature, of 

 creating anew each increment that is made to its substance ? 

 The planter sees nothing enter the tissue ; he detects nothing 

 within it that his senses recognize as belonging either to the air 

 above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth. Where- 

 fore, then, should he regard vegetable growth other than a new 

 production like that of matter in its first creation ? Well may 

 he continue to call his crops p?-oduce, though, to the view of the 

 chemist, they are as simply manufactures, as the products of the 

 button-factory, the flouring-mill, or the paper-machine. 



The cultivator has, indeed, learned by experience that certain 



