No. 129.1 ^^^ 



American Institute, 

 Farmers^ Club, Sept. IQth, 1851, 



Col. Lewis Morris, of Charleston, S. C, in the Chair, Henry 

 Meigs, Secretary. 



The Secretary read the following papers prepared by him, re- 

 marking the great advancement in chemical science, applied 

 to useful purposes in the agricultural and other arts. Instance 

 the recent fact of Dr. Stewart of Baltimore, prescribing ten dol- 

 lars worth of phosphoric acid to the worn out land of the Hon. 

 Reverdy Johnson — land which had refused to bear a bushel of 

 corn an acre, although tilled as well as usual and in an ordinary 

 season — by Dr. Stewart's dose, bore upwards of twenty-nine 

 •bushels of wheat an acre, the very next year, without any other 

 manure whatever. This phosphoric acid being obtained by dissol- 

 ving bones in diluted sulphuric acid, and then mixing with leached 

 ashes for the purpose cf sowing it broadcast. And, again, when 

 the world feels the want of this bone-earth far and wide, Che- 

 mists discover it in mines ! 



CHEMISTRY. 



It is from 1803 that the researches of Berzelius link themselves 

 with all the main steps in the progress of the Chemistry of the 

 present century. The era of modern chemistry may be said to 

 have dawned when the oxygen of Lavoisier began to get the 

 better of the phlogiston of Stahl, and the balance to be recognized 

 as an indispensible instrument of research. It fairly commenced 

 when the discoveries of Volta and Galvani not only made men 

 acquainted with a new power w'liich evidently influenced the 

 chemical relation of bodies, but put into the hands of the experi- 

 menter a new and most effective instrument of investigation. In 

 the successful hands of Davy this instrument soon after led to 

 the most felicitous results. 



In 1803 Berzelius published a paper on the decomposition of 

 saline compounds by galvanism. Five years later, Davy, by the 

 same agent, decomposed the alkalies; and while the world was 

 ringing with this latter discovery, " I succeeded," says the Swed- 

 ish Philosopher, "in going a step farther, and by the aid of 

 quicksilver, decomposed the alkaline earths and ammonia, of 



