EXPERIMENTAL FARMING. 339 



suspect the honesty of the contradiction, and the private tests 

 of its value must be very slowly communicated to the public. 

 On the society's farm these fruits might be fairly tested, and 

 every- body could witness the honest result. The controverted 

 merits of any new species or variety of esculent root or vege- 

 table, might be settled by the same test. 



2. Seeds are sent from abroad to the Patent Office at Wash- 

 ington, for distribution. The majority of these are probably 

 of little value, but those which have never been fairly tried are 

 legitimate subjects of experiment. There is no reason to 

 believe that we are acquainted with every valuable species of 

 grain or pulse which might be profitably raised in this north- 

 ern climate. The success that has followed the experiments 

 already made upon the Chinese sugar cane seems to warrant 

 the belief, that there is yet a wide field open for investigation 

 into the qualities and merits of other foreign articles of agi-i- 

 cultural produce. The sorghum offers a probable source of a 

 new and abundant supply of domestic sugar. Is there not 

 some other vegetable yet undiscovered, that may afford a new 

 supply of oil ? Or may not oil bo extracted from the seeds of 

 some well known plant that has hitherto been considered worth- 

 less ? Experiments might be made in the cultivation of those 

 plants Vv^hich are known to furnish this product, with reference 

 to their improvement. We do not yet know the real value of 

 the seeds of the sunflower, cotton seed, rape seed, and the seeds 

 of the poppy. Is there no new method of cultivation by which 

 the fatness of the seeds of these plants might be increased ? 

 Why should this object be more difficult to attain than that of 

 improving the sweetness of fruits, or the farinaceous property 

 of esculent roots ? Who is prepared to assign precise limits to 

 the usefulness of these and other oily seeds, when improved by 

 scientific culture. 



However numerous or extraordinary the new chemical means 

 for supplying the community with oil, the supply can never make 

 headway of the demand. The whale fishery has long ceased 

 to yield as abundant a supply of this product as it yielded 

 when less oil was consumed. Lard oil has in a limited degree 

 supplied the deficiency, but were it not for the use of spirits of 

 turpentine for light, under the various names given it, for the 

 purpose of deceiving the public in regard to its identity, and to 



