2 TOTHEPUBLIC. 



can farming as differing in character from that of England and 

 other foreign countries, that the distinction is not so much founded 

 upon essentially different principles, as upon position and cir- 

 cumstances ; for the principles of the science have a general appli- 

 cation ; the means and methods for procuring large and bountiful 

 returns from the earth, and for improving and perfecting the 

 different kinds of stock, are the same here as in England or France : 

 they are founded on general and immutable laws. The food of 

 plants consists of the same elements every where, whether these 

 plants grow in valleys or on mountains, in the warm sunny regions 

 of the south or the cold frosty regions of the north, and the laws 

 of life which govern the vegetable and animal kingdoms are the 

 same in all latitudes and climes. The agents which modify organic 

 bodies, and under whose influence they grow up and decay ; by 

 which they are nurtured, and by which they fulfil their destiny, 

 operate uniformly the world over. Heat, light, electricity, and 

 water, awaken every where the dormant forces of the vital atom, 

 and call into action a principle which had lain in a state of rest in 

 the seed or in the bud : they sustain the energies of the being they 

 have just stimulated into life, and maintain its growth and develop- 

 ment from the period of its first vital movement through all the 

 st^o-es it has to pass to reach its maturity. The laws, then, by 

 which these changes are effected, and by which the progress of all 

 organized beings to their proper perfection maybe either hastened 

 or retarded, vary not : they are fixed and stable. The glorious 

 sun, shedding his bright rays upon the mountain forest and upon 

 the herbs of the valley, transforms and vitalizes the fluids and 

 elements which circulate in the leaf; and this transformation is a 

 necessary result, wherever the conditions of sunlight and vegetation 

 exist. It is a terrestrial law, w^hich j^eigns wherever vegetables 

 grow, or wherever they are formed upon a terrestrial plan. The 

 leaves of plants turn green in the light of the sun, the yellow rays 

 of that luminary converting the colorless sap into the substance 

 termed chlorophyl ; and this is a law of light. Can we break this 



