ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 3 



reading provided by their numerous teachers. I have, there- 

 fore, come to the conclusion that the teaching of agriculture 

 has fallen into a groove, and that an effort should be made 

 to place this large subject upon a wider basis. The Royal 

 Agricultural Society of England may unconsciously have 

 assisted in producing the pernicious result complained of by 

 the fact that in its syllabus of agricultural education it 

 places the word " chemistry " in a parenthesis immediately 

 after the phrase " theory of agriculture," thereby conveying 

 the idea that the theory of agriculture is chemistry. It will, 

 however, be one of my first endeavours to show that chemistry 

 is far from representing the theory of agriculture. Agricul- 

 ture is not chemistry any more than chemistry is agriculture. 

 If agriculture was to be defined as belonging to any particular 

 domain or branch of science, it probably would be ranged 

 more properly as a statistical subject than in any other 

 position. Chemistry deals with compositions, and there 

 is abundant scope for chemical investigation with regard to 

 agriculture, whether considered in its bearings upon the 

 composition of soils, the ingredients of the ash and of the 

 soft tissues of plants, or the nutrient value of various seeds 

 and feeding stuffs, the composition of the increase of fatting 

 animals, or the genuineness of substances offered as fertilizers ; 

 in all of these we see the immense value of chemistry and of 

 chemical knowledge. Again, all questions connected with 

 the nutrition of plants and animals, and the sources of 

 nitrogen, and the processes by which crude mineral and 

 organic matter are converted into available plant food, are 

 eminently chemical questions. But in the same manner it 

 would not be difficult to show the vast importance of other 

 sciences as well as of chemistry in relation to agriculture. 

 What, for example, can be more important than the bearings 

 of botany upon the pursuit of agriculture, the ramification of 

 the roots of plants, the fertilization of seed, the detection of 



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