MILTON P. BRAMAN'S ADDRESS. 545 



research than agriculture. The composition of soils, the ele- 

 ments which are combined in vegetables, the requisite ingre- 

 dients for fertilising agents, the presence or deficiency of par- 

 ticular qualities in the earths, which rendered them adapted 

 or unadapted to the production of certain descriptions of plants, 

 and whose very existence was unknown for thousands of 

 years, seem so essential to a successful tillage, that it is a 

 matter of wonder how observation was so well able to remedy 

 the want which chemical investigation is destined to supply. 

 It has already rendered vast benefit to the cultivation of the 

 earth ; and yet agricultural chemistry is still in its infancy. 

 It is just laying the foundations of a mighty superstructure. 

 What then will it not effect when it has advanced to the full 

 maturity of improvement ? A hundred or even fifty years more 

 of progress with the increased activity of the human mind, and 

 the increased facilities for discovery proportionate to that which 

 the last century or half century has witne'^sed, will renovate 

 the face of the earth, and produce results which would now 

 «eem almost like the eifects of supernatural power. 



The contempt with which some interested in the progress of 

 agriculture, and possessing intelligence, look upon the preten- 

 sions of chemistry as an assistant to the farmer is quite aston- 

 ishing. There is not a single process of vegetation that does 

 not involve chemical laws and principles. The soil and the 

 atmosphere are a great laboratory in which nature is constantly 

 performing changes that professors of the chemical art are en- 

 deavoring to imitate by those experiments, in which the laws 

 of science are attempted to be set forth to their pupils. Until 

 a person can prove that the agriculturist has no occasion to 

 ascertain the elements and qualities of the soil which he culti- 

 vates, or the ingredients which enter into the structure of the 

 plants he rears, or the nature of those processes by which the 

 elements contribute to the growth of vegetation, he cannot 

 prove that chemical science is not a most valuable assistant in 

 the art of tilling the ground. Why, all the practical knowl- 

 edge which centuries of observations have collected on the 

 modes of tillage, is the embodiment of so many facts in agri- 

 cultural chemistry, upon which farther investigation in the 

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