24 



kinds of food commonly used for milch cows. We 

 should naturally think that by carefully measuring the 

 food, and changing from one kind to another, the ques- 

 tion might, after a few days' experience, be decided. 

 But every dairyman knows that the quantity of milk 

 varies from day to day for other reasons. Extreme heat 

 or cold, drink at irregular intervals, or the want of it, to 

 say nothing of other causes, so modify the amount of 

 milk produced, that it is next to impossible to deter- 

 mine with exactness how much the difference in the 

 quantity of milk is owing to the difference in quality of 

 the food consumed. We find a like difficulty in other ex- 

 periments in husbandry. There are so many causes op- 

 erating, which we can neither understand nor control, 

 that it is not easy to determine how much of any effect 

 is due to any one of them. 



Here again we see the need of more light and further 

 scientific investigation. We see, too, the value of a 

 comparison of views among the tillers of the soil, who 

 make claim to no other knowledge than that which is 

 experimental. One of the most genial writers of the 

 day, who unites to a high literary culture much practi- 

 cal knowledge of farming, recently gave the following 

 excellent bit of advice : — " If flirm writers would culti- 

 vate a nice habit of observation, and spend their writing 

 force upon exactness of detail in regard to their personal 

 experience, and leave scientific disquisition and theoriz- 

 ing to those who give their lives to such studies, I think 

 we should all be much better off for it." Does not the 

 value of an Agricultural Society depend mainly on the 

 opportunity it affords for an interchange of opinion, and 

 a public statement of agricultural experience ? 



