2 HOW CROPS GROW. 



liest times. Those who first cultivated the soil by dig- 

 ging, planting, manuring and irrigating, had their suffi- 

 cient reason for every step. In all cases, thought goes 

 before work, and the intelligent workman always has a 

 theory upon which his practice is planned. No farm 

 was ever conducted without physiology, chemistry, and 

 physics, any more than an aqueduct or a railway was ever 

 built without mathematics and mechanics. Every suc- 

 cessful farmer is, to some extent, a scientific man. Let 

 him throw away the knowledge of facts and the knowl- 

 edge of principles which constitute his science, and he 

 has lost the elements of his success. The farmer without 

 his reasons, his theory, his science, can have no plan ; 

 and these wanting, agriculture would be as complete a 

 failure with him as it would be with a man of mere 

 science, destitute of manual, financial and executive skill. 



Other qualifications being equal, the more advanced 

 and complete the theory of which the farmer is the mas- 

 ter, the more successful must be his farming. The more 

 he knows, the more he can do. The more deeply, com- 

 prehensively, and clearly he can think, the more econ- 

 omically and advantageously can he work. 



That there is any opposition or conflict between science 

 and art, between theory and practice, is a delusive error. 

 They are, as'they ever have been and ever must be, in the 

 fullest harmony. If they appear to jar or stand in con- 

 tradiction, it is because we have something false or incom- 

 plete in what we call our science or our art ; or else we do 

 not perceive correctly, but are misled by the narrowness 

 and aberrations of our vision. It is often said of a ma- 

 chine, that it was good in theory, but failed in practice. 

 This is as untrue as untrue can be. If a machine has 

 failed in practice, it is because it was imperfect in theory. 

 It should be said of such a failure the machine was 

 good, judged by the best theory known to its inventor, 

 but its incapacity to work demonstrates that the theory 

 had a flaw. 



