398 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



All physical truths require this support, and all our investi- 

 gations are attempts to bring our thoughts, and the data of 

 our thoughts, to a correspondence with the nature of things 

 as they really are. But inventions and contrivances made use 

 of by the individual experimenter do more good than simply 

 to lift him to a higher capacity of observation ; they do some- 

 thins: more than enable him to see what he could not see 

 without them. They enable him the better to direct his 

 thoughts and concentrate them in a narrow channel ; but they 

 also enable others to follow in his path and review his work, 

 because the implements — as scales, measures, etc. — give an 

 exactness to the results, and a precision -in the expression of 

 them, as to make the woi'k of several investigators in the 

 same line comparable. 



Experiments are of two kinds ; the most primitive, inter- 

 rogate nature, without a guess as to what the answer shall 

 be. Of such were those of Goodyear, who gave us solidified 

 India-rubber. He spent twenty years with trial of substances, 

 mixed with the sap of the rubber-tree, before he effected his 

 object. He worked without data of fact or analogy to guide 

 him, and it was by the merest accident that he discovered 

 sulphur to be the thing he was all along seeking. 



At present, in most lines of inquiry, — in nearly all lines of 

 agricultural inquiry, — there is information enough to give a 

 clue to the direction our efforts should take. Qur experiment 

 is generally undertaken to " test or establish some truth per- 

 ceived more or less in advance, or bring to light some truth 

 closely allied." 



Plato has said, "Whosoever asketh knows that for which 

 he seeketh in a general notion, or else how shall he know 

 when he hath found it?" When the general notion is wanting, 

 there is likely to be little directness to our inquiry ; when it 

 is present, it is for us to reduce it to particularity as far as 

 possible. Allured onward, and in a manner directed in our 

 operations by anticipatory thoughts, — the guess yet wanting 

 confirmation, — the task is to discover how the justness of 

 these is to be brought to a test. Not uncommonly a chance 

 suggestion leads to a train of thought that appears to explain 

 phenomena; but the proof lags behind, and it is difficult to 

 keep it abreast with our reasoning. We look to experiment 



