INTRODUCTION. 23 



perfect, because our knowledge of facts is incomplete, our 

 mental insight weak, and our judgment fallible. But the 

 scientific theory which is framed by the contributions of a 

 multitude of earnest thinkers and workers, among whom 

 are likely to be the most gifted intellects and most skillful 

 hands, is, in these days, to a great extent worthy of the 

 Divine truth in nature, of which it is the completest hu- 

 man conception and expression. 



Science employs, in eifecting its progress, essentially the 

 same methods that are used by merely practical men. 

 Its success is commonly more rapid and brilliant, because 

 its instruments of observation are finer and more skillfully 

 handled ; because it experiments more industriously and 

 variedly, thus commanding a wider and more fruitful ex- 

 perience; because it usually brings a more cultivated im- 

 agination and a more disciplined judgment to bear upon 

 its work. The devotion of a life to discovery or invention 

 is sure to yield greater results than a desultory applica- 

 tion made in the intervals of other absorbing pursuits. It 

 is then for the interest of the farmer to avail himself of 

 the labors of the man of science, when the latter is willing 

 to inform himself in the details of practice, so as rightly 

 to comprehend the questions which press for a solution. 



It is characteristic of our time that large associations of practical 

 agriculturists have recognized the immediate pecuniary advantage to be 

 derived from the application of science to their art. This was first done 

 at Edinburgh, in 1843, by the establishment of the "Agricultural Chem- 

 istry Association of Scotland." 



This organization limited itself to a duration of five years. At the 

 expiration of that time, its labors, which had been ably conducted by 

 Prof. James F. W. Johnston, were assumed by the Highland and Agri- 

 cultural Society of Scotland, and have been prosecuted up tathe present 

 day by Dr. Anderson. The Royal Ag'l Soc. of England began to employ a 

 consulting chemist, Dr. Lyon Play fair, in 1843; and since 1848 most 

 valuable investigations, by Prof. "Way and Dr. Voelcker, have regularly 

 appeared in its journal. Other British Ag'l Societies have followed these 

 examples with more or less effect. 



It is, however, in Germany that the most extensive and well-organized 

 efforts have been made by associations of agriculturists to help their 



