HINDRANCES AND HELPS 



promote it by trying to explain it, they would 

 all turn chemists. 



Many good people, of a short range of in- 

 quiry, and a shorter range of reflection, 

 imagine that when the agriculturist has, by 

 the chemist's aid, determined the elements of 

 his crops, and by the same aid, determined the 

 merits of different bags of phosphates or 

 guanos, that nothing remains but to match 

 these chemical colors as he would match colts, 

 — and the race is won. They fancy that the 

 new analyses and experiments — so delicate and 

 so elaborate — are by their revelations reducing 

 the art of farming to a simple affair of the 

 mechanical adjustment of regularly billeted 

 chemical forces. There could not be a greater 

 mistake made; so far from simplifying issues, 

 the new investigations demand a larger practi- 

 cal skill, since the conditions under which it 

 works are amplified and extended. The old 

 bases of procedure, if faulty, were at least 

 compact; the experimental farmer dealt with 

 but few, and those clearly defined; but scien- 

 tific investigation, by its refining processes, has 

 split the old bases of action into a hundred 

 lesser truths, each one of which must be taken 

 into the account, and modify our operations. 



There was a time, for instance, when science, 



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