4 NEGLECT OF SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE IN SCHOOLS. 



Thus much may be said in regard to the future hopes and prospects 

 of scientific agriculture.* But how few practical men are acquainted 

 with what is already known of the principles of the important art by 

 which they live! Trained up in ancient methods — -attached generally 

 to conservative principles in every shape — the practical agriculturists, 

 as a body, have always been more opposed to change than any other 

 large class of the community. They have been slow to believe in the 

 superiority of any methods of culture which differed from their own, 

 from those of their fathers, or of the district in which they live — and, 

 even when the superiority could nc longer be denied, they have been 

 almost as slow to adopt them. 



But the awakening spirit of the time is making itself felt in the re- 

 motest agricultural districts ; old prejudices are dying out, and the cul- 

 tivators of this most ancient, most important, and noblest of all the arts, 

 are becoming generally anxious for information, and eager for improve- 

 ment.! 



Two circumstances have contributed to retard the approach of this 

 better state of things. 



In the first place, the agricultural interest in England has hitherto 

 expended its main strength in attempting to secure or maintain impor- 

 tant political advantages in the state. The encouragement of experi- 

 mental agriculture has been in general neglected, while the diffusion 

 of practical knowledge has been either wholly overlooked or considered 

 subordinate to other objects. No national efforts have been made for 

 the general improvement of the methods of culture. While for the 

 other important classes of the community special schools have been es- 

 tablished, in which the elements of all the branches of knowledge most 

 necessary for each class have been more or less completely taught, and 

 a more enhghtened, because better instructed, race of men gradually 

 trained up, no such schools have been instituted for the benefit of the 

 agriculturist. In our Universities, in which the holders of land, those 

 most interested in its improvement, are nearly all educated, a lesson 

 upon agriculture, the right arm of the State, has hitherto scarcely ever 

 been given 4 With the practice of the art, the theory has also been 



Those who have access to the Journal of the Royal English Agricultural Society will 

 find in the first number a paper by Mr. Pusey, " On the present state of the science of Agri- 

 culture in England," in which much valuable information is contained, and of a more prac- 

 tical kind than I have been able to introduce. This paper ought to be printed in a separate 

 •form, and circulated widely among those who are not members of the Royal English Agri 

 cultural Society. 



t This opinion has been confirmed by the numerous communications I have received 

 from all parts of the country since the publication of these Lectures was announced, and in 

 which I am assured that the want of knowledge ;s generally felt, and a supply in a sufficient- 

 ly elementary form desired, by all classes of agf culturists. I conclude, therefore, that Lie- 

 big means the following sentence to apply to hit* German countrymen : " What can be ex- 

 pected from the present (generation of) farmers, which recoils witii seeming distrust and 

 aversion from all the means of assistance offered it by chemistry, and which does not un- 

 derstand the art of making a rational application of chemical discoveries." I do not think 

 chemists ought in fairness to blame the practical agriculturists for not understanding the 

 art of applying chemical discoveries to the improvement of the culture of the land. They 

 must first know what the discoveries are ; and the error has hitherto been, that no steps 

 have been taken to diffuse this preliminary knowledge. 



t However satisfied young men may be to avoid the labor of additional study while at 

 College, how many in after- life regret that their early attention had not been directed to 

 some of those branches of knowledge which are applicable to common life. Thus the late 

 Lord Dudley, in his 'etters to the Bishop of Llandaff, invariably laments, " as mistakes in 



