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prevails among educated farmers, and others who. 

 profess to be acquainted with the principles of 

 agricultural chemistry, that a simple chemical 

 analysis of a soil which exhibits the different 

 constituents and their proportion, shows its quality, 

 and reveals all defects which have simply to 

 be remedied in order to - obtain the highest 

 yield with the smallest outlay. Several scientific 

 agriculturists have even attempted to formulate 

 certain tables and figures by which the farmer could, 

 so to speak, " measure" the quality of his land. 

 A soil containing a certain quantity of phosphoric 

 acid, lime, potassa, &c., was made a standard of 

 fertility applicable to all climates and to all soils. 



The hasty and erroneous conclusions which these 

 gentlemen drew from imperfect experiments have 

 done immense harm to the cause of scientific 

 agriculture, and it will be long before the distrust 

 now engendered in the minds of the majority 

 of farmers can be removed. For when the 

 farmer, acting on the advice of these men, 

 forwarded samples of the different soils of his 

 fields to be analyzed, the result in many cases 

 was that a poor and almost sterile soil yielded to 

 chemical analysis the same substances in almost 

 the same proportion as a soil which had yielded 

 most luxuriant crops year after year. The 

 physical condition of the soil and its consti- 

 tuents was but rarely examined, a classifies- 



