412 The Neglect of Chemistry hy Practical Farmers. 



he restored to the land in order to produce a similar crop. I now 

 ask the practical farmer to determine whether my theory is prac- 

 tically correct" — In this case the farmer would have reported that 



: it was not practically correct ; but the result would not have 

 shaken his confidence in the chemist, as the above-mentioned 

 failure evidently did. 



The manner, too, assumed by many chemists, is too dogmatic 

 to be very palatable to a farmer, who justly prides himself on 

 knowing something of the art he follows ; and although I have 

 no wish to defend prejudice, I must say it was fortunate for the 

 farmer that he did not alter his practice on the announcement of 

 every new theory, as in this case,. I fear, he would be more out 



• of pocket than he is, unfortunately, at present. Chemists 

 have been too apt to treat farmers as a set of school-boys, who 

 had only to believe what was told them, whether it agreed with 

 their experience or not ; and if they demurred, they were imme- 

 diately charged with being ignorant and prejudiced, in place of 

 being asked for their co-operation to test in the field the practical 

 truth of theories constructed in the closet. Nor was consideration 

 taken of the injury that may be inflicted on a cause, by leaving it 

 in the power of its opponents to convict its advocates of an 



: unfounded statement. 



Cause 3 — viz. : " The liability to error, from the great caution 



. necessary in drawing deductions from any experiment," &c. 



Not only is the chemist exposed to error in the laboratory, but 



. the farmer is even still more liable to error, in ascertaining the 

 amount of dependence that may be placed on any experiment in 



. the field ; for if we take the simplest case, as, where the farmer 

 wishes to determine the comparative effects of any special manures 



. by leaving portions of the same field in an unmanured state, the 



-varying composition of the soil, even when supposed to be 

 perfectly similar, is found to be a fruitful source of error, as we 

 may easily discover by referring to the many series of experiments 

 that are recorded in the ' Quarterly Journal of Agriculture,' where 

 two portions of unmanured ground in the same field are often 

 found to give a widely different amount of produce. But this 

 cause of error is comparatively unimportant, when compared with 

 those which may arise where a farmer tests for himself the value 



. of any manure which he may have heard has been very successful 

 in some other locality, and perhaps highly recommended by some 

 chemists, on scientific principles. In case it should not succeed 

 with him, he immediately condemns the manure, and most pro- 

 bably regards all science with reference to agriculture as deceptive, 

 not taking into consideration, or perhaps not knowing, under what 

 circumstances of soil, climate, previous cropping, &c., the 



