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already almost freed us from their most fierce influences — 

 and has forced the fiery lightning to descend harmlessly 

 from heaven — that the same research may finally free us 

 from the visitations of the fungus and the insect, and may 

 place the dreary droughts of summer under reasonable 

 control. Such hopes we may entertain, not as sources of 

 pride, but as stimulants to exertion — for in so greatly reward- 

 ing the past exercise of our intellectual powers, the Deity 

 obviously intends still further to excite us to study and 

 extract good from the living and dead things of nature, 

 over which he has given us a general dominion. 



Obstacles to Progress. — There are, however, in 

 every country, certain obstacles which oppose themselves 

 to the progress of scientific agriculture, as a branch of 

 knowledge, or to its practical application in the improve- 

 ment of the soil. 



I do not refer to those physical or local obstacles of 

 climate, elevation above the sea, low prices, distance from 

 markets, and so on ; but to those social and class obstacles 

 which, in so many places, and in so many ways, interfere 

 not only with the rapid extension of our knowledge, but 

 with the diffusion of what we already possess as to the 

 application of science to the rural arts. I may enumerate 

 as belonging to obstacles of this kind : 



1st. The aversion to theory, as it is called, which is so 

 generally professed by practical farmers in most countries 

 of the world. Rash and hasty theorising in regard to agri- 

 culture, it is right to reject ; the error lies in confounding 

 with such theory every thing that does not appear to bear 

 directly upon the more common operations of the farm — 

 as if chemistry, or the chemist for example, could be of no 

 use to the farmer, because he does not interfere with the 

 handling of the plough — or with the shape and manage- 

 ment of the drill machine, or the harrow. 



