THE SOUTHERN PLANTER 



85 



plays a very important part in the growth 

 of our crops. But do we know how im- 

 portant ? or are we prepared to say that 

 we get all the benefit we can from it ? 

 Who can tell ? The farmer and the phil- 

 osopher must work together before we will 

 know. 



We know that plants cannot grow with- 

 out moisture ; but do we know the laws 

 which control the absorption of moisture 

 from the atmosphere and the circulation of 

 it in the soil ? Would it do us any good if 

 we did know ? May be so, may be not. It 

 is worth the trial, I think. During the ex- 

 cessive drought of the last summer, I un- 

 dertook to prepare a piece of ground in 

 my garden for turnips. It was, to all ap- 

 pearance, as dry as a bone : but I kept 

 working it with plow and hoe, and harrow 

 and spade; and every time I worked it, I 

 thought it grew moister. I planted my 

 turnips, and have the best crop I have 

 seen. Where did the moisture come from ? 

 Not from below, there w T as none there to 

 come. It would be easy to explain how it 

 came from the atmosphere. But not with- 

 out some science. The commonest obser- 

 vation perceives the interstitial circulation 

 of moisture in the earth. So it did the 

 circulation of blood in the human body 

 many hundreds of years before Harvey 

 found it and explained it, amid the sneers 

 and taunts of the Sangrados, who then 

 thought there was science enough in the 

 world for Doctors. Will the enlightened, 

 and scientific farmer who may first explain 

 how the circulation of the fluids of the 

 earth can be turned to a good account by 

 his brethren of the plow, meet a better 

 fate than Harvey met? I hope that the 

 days of Jack Cade are gone, when the pen 

 and the ink horn were proofs of treason, 

 and doomed their owner to the gallows. 

 But is it probable that any farmer will be 

 enlightened and scientific enough, to ex- 

 plain this and other similar things without 

 being educated ? 



Whence comes the carbon of plants ? 

 Leibig says, "from the atmosphere 

 alone," while Hlubec says — "from the! 

 carbonate also " So of ammonia. The 

 former says — " plants get it from the rain 

 water alone," the latter — "from the ni- 

 trates." When shall we know which is 

 right? certain knowledge on these, and 

 other similar points might revolutionize 

 the whole practise of modern husbandry. 



Now some men are simple enough to ar- 

 gue that because philosophers differ about 

 these matters, therefore philosophy can 

 never be of any use in farming. Lawyers 

 and Doctors have differed from one anoth- 

 er. But if men had quit studying law, 

 when the first difference arose about a law 

 point, what sort of lawyers should we now 

 have ? or what would the science of med- 

 icine be, if it had been abandoned, when 

 practitioners first began to differ about the 

 principles of it ? Again, time is necessa- 

 ry to perfect any thing. The ancients 

 knew that amber when nibbed would at- 

 tract iron filings. But they had no Frank- 

 lin rods to their houses, as we have, and 

 which we owe to a science which takes its 

 name from the Greek word for amber. So 

 the properties of the magnet were known 

 ten centuries before the mariner's com- 

 pass disarmed the sea of half its terrors. 

 In still later times. How long was it after 

 the quivering of a frog's leg, near an elec- 

 trical machine, suggested to the sick phi- 

 losopher the first idea of galvanism, be- 

 fore Morse invented the magnetic tele- 

 graph, which has tamed the lightning of 

 heaven to run on man's errands ? And in 

 all these instances of slow progress, there 

 needed but the labor of the philosopher in 

 his laboratory to carry on the investiga- 

 tions ; while in the applicalion of science 

 to husbandry he is constantly stopped, or 

 led into error, by the want of that practi- 

 cal knowledge which a farmer alone can 

 have. Philosophy and agriculture must 

 be yoked together, and learn to pull to- 

 gether, before the work can be done. In 

 short, we must wed them to one another 

 before we look for a long line of heirs. I 

 know no better place for t hi:? marriage 

 ceremony than the halls of the University 

 of the State. 



I might go on almost indefinitely adding 

 instances in which science properly ap 

 plied would tend to the improvement and 

 advancement of the art of husbandry: 

 But let these few, selected at random, suf- 

 fice for the present, while I advert to mat- 

 ters not scientific in which improvement 

 would result from agricultural education. 

 Of necessity every boy, who grows up on 

 a farm, learns something of farm- work, 

 unless he be an idiot ; but that does not 

 make him a farmer — if it did, our negro 

 boys would be farmers. Even boys rais- 



ed 



town know something of farmii 



