Sir Humphry Davy. 227 



from tlie dignity of science, is perhaps the hardest lesson for humil- 

 ity to teach." But there is no loss of dignity in the performance of 

 any duties that are necessary to the promotion of the happiness of 

 our fellow men. To do good is a work of inherent dignity. 



The principal objects which our author proposed to himself were, 

 first, to ascertain the food of plants, and hence to learn die best 

 method of supplying it ; secondly, to investigate the nature of differ- 

 ent soils, and thus to detect the latent causes of productiveness or ste- 

 rility, with the view of promoting the one and applying the proper 

 remedy to the other ; and, thirdly, to examine the nature of manures, 

 for the purpose of augmenting their fertilizing powers, preventing 

 their waste, and multiplying their number and variety. We regard 

 his efforts as having been by far the most successful on the last point. 

 Inquiries respecting the food of plants, connected as they are with 

 the functions of living vegetables, belong rather to physiology than to 

 chemistry ; the method of deciding on the qualities of a soil, from the 

 knowledge of its constituent principles, is too refined for the simple 

 art of husbandry ; but since manures undergo various chemical chan- 

 ges, and owe their peculiar properties to these changes, they present 

 inquiries which are strictly chemical, and which none but the chemist 

 can satisfactorily answer. Had Davy, by his agricultural inquiries, 

 ascertained nothing more than that the most fertilizing portions of 

 many of the best manures, are likewise the most volatile, and had he 

 done nothing more than furnish the rules which he established to 

 prevent the waste of these portions, he would have conferred a ben- 

 efit upon agriculture of the greatest importance. Although treatises 

 had previously been written with the view of reducing several 

 branches of husbandry to a science, yet the Agricultural Chemis- 

 try of Sir Humphry Davy, was the first, and continues to be the 

 last work, that presents to the agricukurist, a digested code of laws 

 constituting the scientific principles of his art. Many of the mem- 

 bers of the Board of Agriculture, were practically acquainted with 

 farming ; and the high authority conceded to this work, not only by 

 them but by all enlightened agriculturists, is a sufficient proof of the 

 soundness of its doctrines, and its freedom from all visionary hypoth- 

 eses, incompatible with experience. Considering that, when he com- 

 menced this course of lectures he was only twenty two years of age, 

 and had not been bred on the farm, but had spent his life chiefly with 

 books and in the laboratory, we cannot but admire the facility with which 

 he adapted himself to the circumstances of the practical agriculturist ; 



