Reviews. — Liebig''s Organic Chemistry. 345 



own, might disappoint, under a same culture, our vine-dres- 

 sers. With a temperature of climate so variable and chang- 

 ing as our own, the most ingenious foreign expedients might 

 prove wholly futile in producing, with us, similar results. 

 The extreme heat of the summer just past, and the late se- 

 vere drought in many parts of New England, seem to be only 

 equalled by the tropical fervor of southern Africa. We 

 need, then, our own experiments and our own agriculture. 

 The old-fashioned farmer, with his quaint notions derived 

 from the experience of his ancestors, steady and successful 

 culturists, is often more than half right in scorning what he 

 calls book-farming, not because books are not good things, 

 but because books are made, not written; and are manufactur- 

 ed, too, not unfrequently, from some useless foreign article. 



These, and similar remarks, however, do not apply to such 

 works as the one before us. The application of chemistry to 

 agriculture is of a modern date. It necessarily affects the 

 materials of soil, and its efforts are tending to a nice analytical 

 investigation. Natural soils, therefore, be they peat, or gran- 

 itic, or limestone, sand, or gravel, are submitted to a process 

 of artificial disintegration, previous to the application of sci- 

 entific results. The errors of a wrong application of manures, 

 especially mineral, to soils unfitted to them, are thus avoided; 

 and those bodies which will develop their several greatest en- 

 ergies in the production of crops, are known, and can be used 

 with success. By the perusal of such works as this, the 

 farmer need no longer be groping in the dark, and liable to 

 mistakes, nor would the not unnatural odium of farming by 

 the book, be longer existent. 



The vast importance of this application of science to agri- 

 culture, has been long known, and highly recommended. The 

 results of such experiments must, however, be slow in their 

 acquisition, and, like all other branches of human knowledge, 

 liable to error. A degree of caution is therefore to be used, 

 in taking too implicitly all that is affirmed. So prone is hu- 

 man nature, to see, in a favorite theory, all that it anticipates, 

 that it becomes important to hail such efforts as a series of 

 progress towards a good end, rather than as the end itself. 

 The critical student, in his confined laboratory, may be confi- 

 dent in his experiments, and certain of their accuracy, but it 

 is for the agriculturist to prove them, on the larger scale of 

 his own farm. Both of these operators may be thus eminent- 



VOL. VII. NO. IX. 44 



