Agricultural Statistics. 
of the most perfect building could have been fore-conceived 
from an inspection of the bricks or stones out of which the 
fabric grew.* There is something almost mysterious in the 
aggregate power of numbers thus accumulated and employed : 
we seem to recognise in it the gradual elimination of an inner 
soul and meaning, a sort of life-like significance, reminding one 
of the characteristic saying of the Greek sculptor that every block 
of marble contains a statue needing but the chisel of the artist 
to break the shell and bring it forth to daylight. 
But another instance may be taken, and of a thing not less 
proverbially changeful and seemingly capricious — the weather. 
There is scarcely a practical farmer whose own continued expe- 
rience is not sufficient in its way to have led him to suspect 
what the sustained and published observations of science have 
now placed beyond the reach of a doubt, viz., that changeful and 
uncertain as the daily skies may seem to the limited opportu- 
nities of a single observer during a single life, yet that these con- 
stant variations are all referable to a system of latent law 
needing only an adequately extended induction, a sufficiently 
broad basis of statistical facts to be apprehended and applied ; 
and as uniform and inflexible in its operation as that which 
guides a falling apple to the ground, or keeps the seasons in 
their course. That very ' course ' itself is but the larger and 
more readily apprehended manifestation of the same law, need- 
ing but two or three years for proof by observation, while 
hundreds of years and hundreds of observers placed at different 
stations of the globe might perhaps be insufficient (yet only as 
a question of degree) to arrive at a practical and appliahle 
knowledge of the monthly and weekly, and daily ramifications 
of the great arterial system whose broader functions in the 
conduct of the year are patent to every eye. Yet an instance 
of what the statistical observation of facts has already accom- 
plished, even in the difficult problem of the ' Law of storms ' 
applied to actual use, occurred a few years ago on the occasion 
of a hurricane which visited New York, causing extensive 
damage to the shipping in the bay and harbour. It having 
been ascertained that these storms proceed in certain defined 
currents describing curves of known radii, or proportions, an 
experimental notice was forwarded by telegraph to New Orleans, 
upwards of a thousand miles away at the mouth of the Mis- 
* The classical reader will be reminded of the story of the pedant of Hierocles, 
who, having a house for sale, used to cany about with him a brick to show as a 
specimen. The point of this story, conversely taken, is not a bad illustration of 
the error of attempting to challenge or anticipate the aggregate results derivable 
from statistical matter when put together. It is no longer a mere congeries of parts 
or items — so many hundred thousand of bricks. It forms a new and complete 
whole — an edifice presenting features, and applicable to purposes, of which the 
contributor of the items could form little idea. 
