224 MY FARM. 



inorganic matters ; and, if you have any of these 

 about your barn-yards, it concerns them ; it tells you 

 if your observation and experience can't determine 

 what they are. Of course it may be an aid to 

 agriculture ; and so are wet-weather, and a good hoe, 

 and grub, and common-sense, and industiy. It may 

 explain things you would not otherwise understand ; 

 it may correct errors of treatment ; it may protect 

 you from harpies who vend patented manures not 

 because it is agricultural chemistry ; but, I should say 

 rather, looking to a good deal of farm practice be- 

 cause it is not agricultural, and because it deals in cer- 

 tainties, and not plausibilities. There is such a thing 

 as religion, and it helps, sometimes, to purify Demo- 

 crats and sometimes Republicans ; but who thinks of 

 talking unless his head is turned about democratic 

 religion, or republican Christianity ? 



The error of the thing works ill, as all errors do 

 in the end. It indoctrinates weak cultivators with 

 the belief that the truths they find set down in 

 agricultural chemistries, are agricultural truths, as 

 well as chemical truths ; and thereupon, they mount 

 a promising one as a hobby, and go riding to the 

 wall. Chemistry is an exact science, and Agriculture 

 is an experimental art, and always will be, until rains 

 stop, and bread grows full-baked. A chemical truth 

 is a truth for all the world and the ages to come ; 



