648 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



among us, but is feeling its way along. It has begun, and, as 

 the French say, "it is only the first step that costs." The de- 

 mand will create the supply. I do not believe that scientific 

 farming is to be made easy to the lazy and unenterprising, or 

 that agricultural chemistry and the ability to analyze soils and 

 products will in my day become as common as the ability to 

 read and write ; but still I have no doubt that the day is now 

 dawning, and that those of us who live twenty years will see 

 its full light, when science will be the guide of art in agricul- 

 ture, and practical and scientific skill, united in the same man, 

 will be common among farmers; and that there will be great 

 increase in the productiveness of our lands from improved 

 modes of cultivation, and the application of specific manures 

 to meet the wants of particular soils and particular crops. 



That such an event is desirable, all will admit; but is it 

 likely to happen? I ask, if it should occur, would it be more 

 remarkable than things which have occurred in our time? 

 How long is it since the idea of navigation by steam was ridi- 

 culed as an absurdity ? How many years ago since it would 

 have been pronounced an impossibility ever to send a message 

 thousands of miles with the rapidity of thought? 



All knowledge that is uncommon is mysterious, and the 

 diffusion of it among the people believed impossible. But 

 familiar instances occur to me of mysterious and abstruse 

 knowledge becoming very common. Algebra, which our 

 school girls now study, and are proficients in, was first intro- 

 duced into our academies since my recollection ; and I remem- 

 ber well, when a class of young men about to enter Harvard 

 University, thought it an outrage that they should be compelled 

 to enter upon that abominably hard study ; and many of the 

 his/her branches of mathematics which were then considered 

 too deep for all but a few superior mortals, are now well un- 

 derstood in and out of the universities. , Go back twenty-five 

 years, and civil engineering was as little understood as agricul- 

 tural chemistry now is; it was a mystery, and that man who 

 knew enough to construct a railroad was a wonder. But there 

 was a demand for that kind of knowledge, and it was supplied. 

 Many a self-made young man who was not born a quarter of 

 a century ago, is now as accomplished a master of that branch 



