L. V. BELL'S ADDRESS. 599 



ments in augmenting crops, have been made by men who 

 believe and who put in practice to as great an extent as prac- 

 ticable, the new applications of science to agriculture. In cast- 

 ing an eye over all the publications on the subject made within 

 the past five years, one is convinced that this science has 

 received an unqualified admittance into the minds of almost 

 all the intelhgent and devoted friends of husbandry. The 

 grand summing up then of the reply to the inquiry with which 

 I commenced, is this ; — Agriculture is now in a rapidly transi- 

 tion state from a tentative art to a true science, and we are on 

 the verge of wonderful results from this progress. The farmer 

 has a right to anticipate a " better day coming," when the 

 labors, the uncertainties, the perplexing mysteries of his calling 

 shall all be lightened, when there shall be a more exact stand- 

 ard of duty accomplished, or of results which are practicable. 

 " WiJl this good time," you ask, " require that every man shall 

 be a chemist or a philosopher ? — for if so," you will say, " we 

 are too old to learn new trades." In reply I would say, that 

 of a thousand master mariners who direct their vessels with 

 accuracy and certainty across the pathless ocean, probably not 

 one understands the principles on which his chronometer, his 

 sextant or his nautical tables, are based. If the easiest table 

 of the navigator was expunged and lost, a convention of all 

 the shipmasters of the Atlantic coast could not replace it. I 

 look for the same analogy in the application of chemistry to 

 agriculture — that is, that our farmers should make the no 

 difficult acquisition of so much science, as will enable them to 

 apply the sextants and tables of their art to its every day 

 course. 



