98 LETTER-FILES OF S. W. JOHNSON 



All others bear a false witness, false because partial, and 

 cannot be admitted to testify in the courts of philosophy; 

 or, if their deficiencies escape detection and their depositions 

 are received, a wrong verdict will be rendered. 



The husbandman has been baffled by the number and intri- 

 cacy of the causes and conditions that influence his results; 

 his reason has been discouraged and stupefied by its inability 

 to harmonize the various, often conflicting and often hidden, 

 agencies of nature ; and the habit has been confirmed through 

 centuries, of adopting maxims and empirical rules as guides 

 in the cultivation of the soil. These maxims have been mostly 

 the result of experience and so far have been correct and 

 satisfactory, but they have been derived usually from a limited 

 experience, have been originally found true only in a narrow 

 district, and the precise circumstances that have made them 

 applicable have not been understood, so that when put into 

 practice elsewhere they have failed utterly; or, what is 

 worse, partially, yet not to such a degree as to lead to 

 their rejection. . . . 



The first thing to be done is to multiply facts. This is 

 accomplished by observation and experiment. Ordinary 

 observation takes cognizance of what transpires in the usual 

 course of nature. Experiment is that refined instrument of 

 modern research which interferes with the ordinary course 

 of nature, and compels her to unusual manifestations. Obser- 

 vation is the eye that watches her voluntary movements and 

 the ear that hears her willing revelations. Experiment is a 

 wise cunning that cross-examines her and pries out her secret 

 counsels. — 



The roughness of ordinary agricultural observation arises, 

 to a great degree, from a want of knowledge as to where lies 

 the gist of the observation, and amounts to an incapacity for 

 observing. What keenness of perception we attribute to the 

 Indian who traces his way through the forest with invariable 

 accuracy by little indications that to us would be undistin- 

 guishable. The secret is that he knows where to look. He 



