MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



There is no more a chemistry of agriculture 

 than there is a chemistry of horse-flesh, or a 

 conchology of egg-shells. Chemistry concerns 

 all organic and inorganic matters; and, if you 

 have any of these about your barn-yard, it 

 concerns them; it tells you— if your observa- 

 tion and experience can't determine — what they 

 are. Of course it may be an aid to agriculture ; 

 and so are wet-weather, and a good hoe, and 

 grub, and common-sense, and industry. It 

 may explain things you would not otherwise 

 understand ; it may correct errors of treatment ; 

 it may protect you from harpies who vend 

 patented manures — not because it is agricul- 

 tural chemistry ; but, I should say rather, look- 

 ing to a good deal of farm practice— because 

 it is not agricultural, and because it deals in 

 certainties, and not plausibilities. There is 

 such a thing as religion, and it helps, some- 

 times, to purify Democrats and sometimes Re- 

 publicans; but who thinks of talking — unless 

 his head is turned— about democratic religion, 

 or republican Christianity? 



The error of the thing works ill, as all errors 

 do in the end. It indoctrinates weak culti- 

 vators with the belief that the truths they find 

 set down in agricultural chemistries, are agri- 

 cultural truths, as well as chemical truths ; and 



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