62 NUTRITION. 



the history of human progress, of the light which 

 Truth sheds on every thing within its influence, 

 than the improvement that modern agriculture 

 has derived from the science of Chemistry. The 

 earth has been in some sort cultivated from 

 the time when Adam was sent forth to till it, 

 yet not until the last half century,* had the 

 advantages the husbandman may derive from 

 an acquaintance with the composition of the 

 soil of his fields, been known, and little could 

 the landowners of the days in which the alche- 

 mist, half empiric and half enthusiast, was pre- 

 paring the way by his toilsome and blind gro- 

 pings for the more enlightened researches of his 

 successors, imagine that the time would come 

 when chemistry should, at least metaphorically, 

 teach him how to turn earth into gold. The 

 subject is worthy of all attention, not merely 

 from the pecuniary advantage the scientific cul- 

 tivator may reasonably expect to gain, but from 



* Sir Humphrey Davy, in his first lecture before the 

 Board of Agriculture, delivered in the year 1802, says, 

 " Agricultural Chemistry has not yet received a regular 

 and systematic form. It has been pursued by competent 

 experimenters but for a short time only ; the doctrines 

 have not as yet been collected into any elementary trea- 

 tise," &c. 



