INTRODUCTION. 19 



must not be forgotten that their growth is not altogether 

 parallel. There are facts in art for which science can, as 

 yet, furnish no adequate explanation. Art, though no 

 older than science, grew at first more rapidly in vigor and 

 in stature. Agriculture was practised hundreds and 

 thousands of years ago, with a success that does not com- 

 pare unfavorably with ours. 1ST early all the essential points 

 of modern cultivation were regarded by the Romans be- 

 fore the Christian era. The annals of the Chinese show 

 that their wonderful skill and knowledge were in use at a 

 vastly earlier date. 



So much of science as can be attained through man's 

 unaided senses, reached considerable perfection early in 

 the world's history. But that part of science which re- 

 lates to things invisible to the unassisted eye, could not 

 be developed until the telescope and the microscope had 

 been invented, until the increasing experience of man and 

 his improved art had created and made cheap the other in- 

 ventions by whose aid the mind can penetrate the veil of 

 nature. Art, guided at first by a very crude and imperfectly 

 developed science, has, within a comparatively recent pe- 

 riod, multiplied those instruments and means of research 

 whereby science has expanded to her present proportions. 



The progress of agriculture is the joint work of theory 

 and practice. In many departments great advances Im^e 

 been made during the last hundred years ; especially is this 

 true in all that relates to implements and machines, and to 

 the improvement of domestic animals. It is, however, in 

 just these departments that an improved theory has had 

 sway. More recent is the development of agriculture in its 

 chemical and physiological aspects. In these directions the 

 present century, or we might almost say the last 30 years, 

 has seen more accomplished than all previous time. 



The first book in the English language on the subjects 

 which occupy a good part of the following pages, was 

 written by a Scotch nobleman, the Earl of Dundonald, and 



