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raised upon the island was more than doubled. It is estimated 

 that under the improved systems of agriculture, the food necessary 

 to sustain forty millions of beings may be raised on this little speck 

 of the ocean. We can understand this when we find that on the 

 estate of Mr. Coke (afterwards Earl of Leicester) the rental has 

 increased eight fold in fifty years — from X5,000 to £40,000. 



But the dignity and worth of your calling is shown not only by 

 the great fruits of its labors and progress, but by the large re- 

 quirements it makes of those who would prosecute it with skill 

 and success. To subdue the earth and to replenish it. To sub- 

 due the earth, we must understand its powers or laws of growth 

 and production, and must so prepare the soil as to give the 

 freest and fullest play to those laws ; science must be combined 

 with art, the culture of the mind with the culture of the soil. 



The plant that springs up at my feet, on what food does it 

 feed ? What condition of the soil is necessary to ripen and per- 

 fect its fruit ? To answer these questions, which every season 

 repeats to the farmer, is the province of science. The plant must 

 have nutriment. I will feed it. But will the manure on my fork 

 assist or check its growth ? Will any of its properties enter into 

 the composition of the plant ? Again, I plant wheat in my field 

 this year. It takes up for its nourishment and nearly exhausts 

 certain properties of the soil. What shall I do ? Science gives 

 the answer. She says sow a root crop the next year, and while 

 you are raising the root crop the influence of the atmosphere on 

 the soil, aided by culture, will prepare and render soluble the food 

 which will supply the wheat the year after. It is thus we can 

 understand the remark of Professor Johnston, that the art of 

 agriculture is almost entirely a chemical art, and that nearly all 

 its processes are to be explained upon chemical principles. 



And this is true, I conceive, not only of what may be called 

 the natural but the mechanical processes of agriculture. The 

 mere passing of the ploughshare or the harrow through the soil 

 can have, of itself, no effect in increasing its productive powers. 

 How, then, does the deep ploughing of dry land and the stirring 

 of its subsoil increase its fertility ? Mainly by increasing its 

 power to absorb water, through whose gentle agency the food of 

 plants is dissolved and held in solution for its use. " This power 



