DR. XIGPIOLS' ADDRESS. 



I presume it is kiiov,'n to most of those whom I have the honor to 

 acldrGss, that, during the past eight years, the facts and principles of 

 scientific agriculture have received from me a considerable share of 

 attention, and that, with the view of giving to those studies practical 

 value, a farm in Essex County has been made the theatre of exjoeri- 

 mental in([uiry and observation. After a quarter of a century of 

 exacting labor within the walls of a chemical laboratory, it was with 

 inexpressible delight that I found raysclf transferred to the sweet mead- 

 ows and hills in the country, with opportunity of studying the nature 

 of soils and plants upon my own farm. Is it not true that as we grow 

 older we are drawn closer to mother earth, and that, as the time 

 approaches when we must be folded in her arms to be resolved back 

 again to the dust from which wo were taken, we have increased longings 

 for the intimate society of the plants and beautiful flowers which spring 

 from her bosom V It seems to me that this love of nature, in mature 

 life, is an instinct common to us all, and that it is a duty to heed the 

 yearnings of the soul so unmistakably manifested. 



The most delightful and instructive of the studies connected with 

 the farm, have been upon plant life and the food of plants, and I design, 

 in what I have to say, to call your attention, specifically, to a consid- 

 eration of the Food of Plants. It may seem to many that a talk upon 

 the food of plants, implies the necessity of a belief in the possession, 

 by plants, of certain organs or powers of digestion and assimilation, 

 and this belief should be entertained, for it is founded upon fact. 

 Plants do indeed, in a most proper sense, eat and drink, and they are 

 as capricious in regard to the kind and (juality of the food which they 

 demand, as are animals or human beings. It is as interesting to study 

 the nature of the appetite and wants of a stalk of corn or wheat, or a 

 blade of timothy, as that of a child which the mother so carefully and 

 anxiously watches and tends during the weeks and months of early 

 infancy. I suppose, as farmers engaged in the toil and drudgery of 

 every day life upon the farm, you do not stop to speculate upon, or 

 consider much, the philosophy of plant growth, or to admire the delicate 

 springing blade or opening leaf, which are everywhere around you in 

 early summer, but perhaps we should all be better men, and better able 

 to rear the plant children of our fields, if we devoted more time to a 

 study of their structure and wants. What a mystery there is in the 

 life of a plant ! How does a tree or a shrub or a blade of grass grow 'i 

 This interrogatory has often been put to men of science, and the patient 

 researches which have been made by the aid of that beautiful and 



