64 



Anniversary Meeting. 



[Nov. 30, 



for his long-continued and important researches and discoveries in 

 agricultural chemistry. 



The researches of Boussingault have extended over nearly half a 

 century, and it might be difficult to find an investigator whose results 

 relating to a great variety of subjects have in respect of accuracy and 

 trustworthiness better stood the test of time. 



The lucid simplicity with which his writings narrate well-established 

 and well-arranged facts, is not less remarkable than the judicial caution 

 with which he has abstained from expressing opinions upon questions 

 beyond the reach of decisive evidence. 



His experimental results and the conclusions which he has drawn 

 from them have been deservedly trusted by other workers in the same 

 field, and have safely guided them in their labours. Their incon- 

 testable excellence has prevented them from becoming subjects of 

 animated discussion, and thus arousing as much attention and interest 

 in the outer world as has sometimes been aroused by hasty experi- 

 ments and daring generalizations. 



I cannot attempt within the limits of this address to give an account 

 of his investigations, and I should probably weary you were I even to 

 enumerate them, relating as they do to a vast variety of phenomena ; 

 but I may point out that lying as most of them do in the domain of 

 agricultural chemistry, they have involved difficulties of no common 

 order. Boussingault is not only an excellent chemical analyst and 

 experimentalist, but at the same time a model farmer. 



His numerous determinations of the nitrogen, carbon, and hydrogen 

 in crops and in the manures supplied to them^ have proved him to be 

 skilled not only in selecting and applying the best known methods of 

 analysis, but even in improving and perfecting them. 



His determinations of the proportions of those valuable constituents 

 of manures which can be assimilated by various crops, have involved 

 an intimate acquaintance with the conditions which experience has 

 proved to be most favourable to the cultivation of the various crops. 



His numerous and varied experiments on the feeding of animals, 

 showing the proportions between the nitrogenized and fatty or amy- 

 laceous constituents supplied in the food and those assimilated or 

 formed by the animal organism, while tracing the distribution of the 

 remainder between the pulmonary and other excretions, have had 

 most important physiological as well as practical bearings. 



In all his investigations we see proofs that while accurately and 

 critically acquainted with the discoveries and opinions of other workers 

 and thinkers in his own particular domain of science, he has been able 

 to devise and carry out simple and crucial forms of experiment well 

 calculated to decide the truth. 



A remarkable instance of this is afforded by those truly masterly 

 experiments by which he proved that all the nitrogen found in the 



