220 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



fied that the time is approaching when further progress can 

 only be made by means of what is properly called Science. 

 All that expense can do has been nearly done already. 

 The world still advances, population goes on increasing, 

 and the comforts of life are more generally diffused. 

 What was sufficient for yesterday is not enough for to- 

 day ; and what is enough for to-day will not satisfy the 

 wants of to-morrow. We must continue unceasingly to 

 draw new treasures from our common Mother Earth. We 

 should have nothing but famine, depopulation, and death 

 before us, had not God, who daily gives us so many new 

 wants to satisfy, supplied us at the same time with a 

 powerful' mean for warding these evils off. This exhaust- 

 less mean is Science. Science, which fills the world with 

 its wonders ; which has supplied the electric telegraph, 

 enabling us to communicate instantaneously from one end 

 of the earth to the other ; which has given us steam, and, 

 perhaps ere long, heated air, to transport vast multitudes 

 of men and merchandise by land and sea ; which in the 

 workshops of industry produces so many wonderful 

 changes in inert matter; but which has scarcely as yet 

 been tried on agriculture. Nothing serves better to show 

 the progress making in agricultural chemistry in England, 

 than a quarter of an hour's conversation with the first 

 farmer one meets. Most of them are already familiar 

 with the technical terms. They talk of ammonia and 

 phosphates like professed chemists, and are quite alive to 

 the unlimited field of production this study may open 

 up. Cheap publications upon the subject abound, and 

 lecturers paid by subscription hold forth throughout the 

 country. In London there is a thriving school of chem- 

 istry and geology as applied to agriculture, under the 

 direction of Mr Nesbit. 



After these two counties comes the ancient kingdom 



