ESSENTIALS TO INVESTIGATION. 397 



directly to the fact we seek. To put ourselves at once upon 

 the path is difficult, but it becomes less difficult in the measure 

 of the comprehensiveness of our familiarity with the subject 

 as at present known, and our acquaintance with the methods 

 taken to reach truth approved and supported by the foremost 

 discoverers. There need be no apprehension that agricult- 

 ural investigation demands methods so dissimilar to such as 

 find favor in other lines of inquiry, as to make acquaintance 

 with them foreii^n to our interests. Rather would it seem to 

 be of the first importance that we approach agriculture with 

 such modes of study and instrumentalities, as in various parts 

 of physical inquiry, have opened wide the doors to knowledge. 



Experiments have been said to be "the investigator's language 

 addressed to nature, to which she sends intelligible replies." 

 They are tests of knowledge, and measure with exactness its 

 limits. The experiment is but a nicer observation,, and the 

 investigation of some men tells them only what others had 

 found out by a kind. of instinct. Double the mind's grasp of 

 phenomena, and many of the doubts that fret us are at once 

 removed. It is to double, treble, quadruple our grasp if we 

 can so far clear up our thoughts upon a subject as to analyze 

 it, and set apart those aspects that are analogous from such as 

 are dissimilar, and reduce our doubt to cover a single point, 

 so that our interrogation of nature may be explicit, and have 

 relation to a single phenomenon. With proper framing of the 

 question, the task is half accomplished. What are the con- 

 trivances the experimenter invents, but to bring phenomena 

 more clearly before the senses? What are the scales, meas- 

 ures, the thermometer, the sun-dial, the microscope, but 

 attempts to perfect the senses? The good an experiment 

 does for our reasoning, is what the microscope does for our 

 eyes ; the latter amplifies our vision ; it brings to a severer 

 test what we think we know, and in showing us our errors, 

 discovers new truths. The experiment does much for our 

 reasoning by leading us to facts that other men w^ill accept as 

 facts ; for they are obtained by a process, wdiere the experi- 

 ment is appropriate to the nature of its subject, not to be 

 called in cjuestion. 



It is common for us to think we have facts, that are the 

 outgrowth of our fancy only, and have no support in nature. 



