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IX. — The Present State of Agi-icultiire in its Relations to Che- 
mistry and Geology. A Lecture delivered before the Society 
at the Meeting in York, by Professor Johnston. 
My Lord Yarborougii and Gentlemen, — It is a striking 
circumstance, in connexion with vegetable growth, that some 
plants are seen to thrive on one kind of soil, or on one geo- 
logical formation only. You meet with them in abundance in 
one country or district of Europe — where chalks, or marls, or 
limestones, or similar sandy or salt-bearing soils occur — while in 
the rest of Europe you seek for them in vain. But the grasses 
on which herbivorous quadrupeds thrive, are seen on soils of almost 
every kind, if the climate favour them ; and the corn-bearing 
plants on which man lives find their support on every geological 
formation. 
Is it illogical to perceive in this striking fact an evidence of 
design? — to infer from it that the Deity wills that man and his 
domesticated races should subdue and people the whole earth? 
But on inquiring into this fact more nearly, we make two 
further observations : first, that the corn and herbage do not 
grow with equal luxuriance on all soils, or give an equal return; 
and second, that on the same soils on which, when left to them- 
selves, they grow in an unhealthy manner, they prosper greatly 
when tended and cared for by human skill. 
Is it illogical, again, from these facts, to conclude that the 
Deity intends the soil to be tilled, not only with the sweat of the 
brow, but by the efforts of the intellect of man ? If it yield most 
abundantly to the thoughtful and instructed cultivator, is not the 
purpose of the Deity manifest — that mental should combine with 
bodily industry in making the most of the universal pioneness of 
the earth, every where, to produce the means of sustaining human 
life? 
Now we cannot walk through our rural districts and look at 
the young corn in spring without being struck with the varying 
verdure as we proceed from enclosure to enclosure, or from farm 
to farm. The sickly yellow and the smiling green each silently 
but distinctly expresses the natural deficiencies of the soil, or 
the careful attention of the husbandman. Among the large as- 
sembly I now address, I will venture to say that there is not a 
single practical man to whom such appearances are not familiar, 
and who, during the past unusual iTionlh of May, has not often 
said to himself, " If this or that field were mine, the corn should 
soon put on a livelier hue — the crops which that farm promises 
^vould neither satisfy myself, nor satisfactorily pay my rent." In 
other words, there is a large breadth both of our arable and our 
