110 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



such has been the miiUiplication of exact inquiries in connec- 

 tion with agricultural phenomena and the relations of chemistry 

 and physiology to this subject of late years, that we are in a 

 condition to deduce many partial laws, and thus to avail our- 

 selves largely in practice of the lights which science, in its 

 various forms of inquiry, has been able to shed upon the sub- 

 ject. Does the view that has been presented discourage us from 

 the cultivation of science in its relations to agriculture ? Surely 

 not. It only shows us the more how necessary science is. And 

 let me here say, that one of the greatest advantages that can be 

 obtained from Schools of Agriculture, in their most enlarged and 

 comprehensive shape, — one of the greatest, if not the most 

 important result for the future progress of the science and the 

 art, is this : that the training which is enforced by the study of 

 the exact sciences, in the class-room, in the laboratory, and 

 among the various phenomena and objects which the naturalist 

 exhibits to the student, is the only sure process by which he can 

 be qualified for the exact determination of the facts of agriculture, 

 and for deducing from them scientific laws, and rules for practice. 

 See how it has been with meteorology ! Our fathers, for 

 how many generations it is not necessary to say, had been piling 

 up their observations, so that a library might be filled, merely by 

 the numbers they had jotted down as records of temperature 

 and other phenomena of the weather. Yet nearly the whole of 

 tliat vast mass of what used to be called facts has been found to 

 be almost valueless for purposes of generalization, simply because 

 the observations were not made in the right way or of the right 

 kind ; they were not comparable one with another ; the instru- 

 ments themselves were not reliable, and there was no standard 

 with 'which they were compared. Thus, in spite of the labor of 

 so many thousand observers, in recording the coldness of win-, 

 ters and the warmth of summers, and the varying pressure of 

 the air, no sufficient data were collected for determining truly 

 the distribution of temperature, pressure and other elements of 

 climate, and it is only of late years that, through the adoption 

 of precise methods of observation introduced by science, a sure 

 progress has been made in unfolding the laws of these varying 

 influences and phenomena. Habits of exact observation, accord- 

 ing to scientific methods, aiming to approach the nicety and 

 precision of mathematical determination, — these are the results 



