No. 144.J • 44 



All will admit that some men profit by observation more than 

 others, while but few know the means by which this power of 

 observation may be increased. As examples of this absence of 

 observation, how few farmers know that cows and sheep have no 

 upper teeth; how few are aware that cold water will dissolve 

 more salt or lime, than hot water. Does one in one hundred, 

 know that a gallon of water will dissolve more plaster of Paris 

 than it will of slacked lime, that has been long enough exposed 

 to the atmosphere to become carbonate of lime 1 How many know 

 that water is at its mean of size when at forty degrees of heat, 

 that if cooled below that temperature it swells, until it becomes 

 ice at thirty-two degrees, and if heated above forty degrees, it also 

 swells, until it eventually becomes steam, thus occupying more 

 than 1,700 times its original space? Still all these are facts, and 

 to minds generally observant, they are well known to be true. 



The science of farming embraces all nature's laws, and the ha- 

 bit of observation will soon render the farmer ready to recognize 

 these laws in all their useful applications. Let him know enough 

 of chemistry, which he may do by one week's reading, to com- 

 prehend the various changes that the integrants of the soil under- 

 go to enable them to enter the plant, and he will soon observe the 

 fact that these chemical changes must include the ability of being 

 dissolved in water before the plant can receive them. He will 

 also soon find that water, in its pure state, will not dissolve the 

 necessary quantity of all these materials, unless it contains car- 

 bonic acid, and this will necessarily lead to his understanding 

 from whence this gas is obtained, and why it pervades the atmos- 

 phere. When he observes that water from a spring, applied to 

 plants in time of drouth, will not produce the same amount of 

 improvement as is received from a similar amount of water falling 

 through the atmosphere in the form of rain, ne will soon under- 

 stand that the rain water comes charged with some ingredient 

 from the atmosphere which the spring water does not contain, 

 and the slightest examination informs him that this is ammonia, 

 and that it is received in the atmosphere from the dt cay of former 

 crops, animal exudations, &c. The slightest exercise of the mind 

 in the obfervance and application of the commonest truths of 



