RECAPITULATION. 3 1 



A large proportion of the weight of all living bodies is water : four-fifths of an animal 

 is lost by drying. So also in some of the most important products of vegetable life, a 

 very large amount has to be set down to water. These facts prove the importance 

 of water ; and it surprises every one, when he is told for the first time that highly 

 organized animals, weighing twenty and thirty pounds, when dried, have only a few 

 grains of saline ash : they are vesicles of animated sea water. 



Many persons have been mistaken in their notions of scientific husbandry ; or they have 

 failed to seize upon the higher idea embraced in the investigations of the philosophic 

 farmer. We can regard scientific husbandry as an investigation of the mutual adapta- 

 tions of the three kingdoms of nature to each other, and of the methods of applying 

 fixed principles to practice. No other method of farming, but that founded on 

 adaptations fixed in nature by its Great Author, can be successful, and repay the 

 efforts of the laborer. Some of these methods are easily discovered, and have ever 

 been used : others are not so accessible, and require other sources of knowledge for 

 their discovery. Chemistry has in this way become the handmaid of agriculture, and 

 has already unfolded new and most important principles in the employment of this 

 first and chief est of arts. 



