70 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



his final report he says, that the total expense to the people had 

 been about one cent for each inhabitant, and that one of the 

 best informed men in the State had expressed the opinion that 

 it had already been worth thirty times its cost in its beneficial 

 effects upon the agriculture of the Commonwealth. If he had 

 been instrumental in reclaiming an average of three acres of 

 peat bog in each town, as he supposed he had, he shows tliat he 

 had thus created property worth at least $150,000 and yielding 

 an income of 820,000 per annum. If he had led to the making 

 each year in every town an average of two hundred loads of 

 compost worth one dollar more a load than it cost, he demon- 

 strates that he had thus developed an annual income of 

 860,000. 



The money expended was therefore obviously returned many 

 times over during the progress of the survey, and will be every 

 year while agriculture is practised. It is an important fact that 

 such agencies for good, once put into operation, continue with 

 constantly increasing power to benefit mankind to the remotest 

 generation. 



Near the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the 

 science of chemistry was rapidly assuming its present form and 

 revealing to the waiting world the wondrous truths relating to 

 the composition of soils, water and air, the food of plants and 

 animals, and the true relations of the three kingdoms of nature 

 to each other, Sir Humphrey Davy published his great work on 

 Agricultural Chemistry. The deepest interest in regard to pos- 

 sible improvements in agricultural operations by the direct ap- 

 plication of science was excited in the minds of many most 

 intelligent men, both in this country and in Europe. It had 

 been for centuries previous to this time the belief that chemical 

 science could devise some method for transmuting the baser 

 metals into gold. Kings, nobles and scholars had been alike 

 interested to secure this result, but chemical analysis demon- 

 strated that it was no longer to be hoped for. 



The enthusiastic devotion of the alchemists to the mystic 

 science was now in a measure replaced by the unwarranted ex- 

 pectations of those wlio sought the advancement of agriculture. 

 Many imagined that chemical analysis was to reveal at once the 

 causes of sterility in soils, and to discover forthwith some sim- 

 ple but sufficient remedy. This resulted in an immense amount 



