Agrimlture in its Rclativiis to Chemistry and Gcolcr/y. 201 
pasture land which could easily be made, and by known means, 
to yield a greatly increased return. 
How comes this state of things to exist ? Some of you may 
answer, because obstacles everywhere stand in the way of agricul- 
tural improvement, which obstacles ought to be removed. The 
leasehold tenure of land in many parts of England, you may say, 
and the law of entail in Scotland, restrain the zeal or tie up the 
hands of the landlord ; or the relations between landlord and 
tenant are too undefined and uncertain to justify the latter in 
putting forth all the energies of his mind and purse in improving 
the land he holds. To such answers as these I attach much 
weight, and they refer to a kind or class of obstacles which I 
believe does really stand in the way of the broad and general 
advancement of the agricultural productiveness of the country ; 
but they do not meet the reflection with which I commenced, nor 
the peculiar train of thought to which I wish at present to confine 
your attention. 
The walk I suppose you to have taken in the early spring is 
over a limited district, in which the law is the same to every 
landlord, and the customary tenure alike to every tenant. Yet, 
even here, the deep green of one field contrasts with the pale 
yellow of another, and while the promise of return in autumn 
may on one farm be little more than five, on another it may be 
fifteen fold. The green field and the yellow are under the same 
circumstances of law and tenure. How come they then to yield, 
the one forty bushels cheerfully and almost joyfully, the other a 
bare twenty bushels, and not without a grudge ? 
In replying to this question we cannot help fixing our attention 
especially on the influence and power of knowledge. The green 
field is the most skilfully laboured ; the more productive farm is 
under the direction of a higher knowledge. 
Some of you may indeed say, and not without justice, that of 
your own two neighbours whose farms thus differ, the one has 
more natural energy than the other, and to this difference you 
may be inclined to trace the relative degrees of prosperity of 
themselves and of their farms. But energy in a moral sense, if 
not the child, is in reality among the nearest of kin to sound 
knowledge. How many men, rich in physical energy, stand 
with folded and idle hands because they are poor in knowledge I 
Tell such a man what he should do and he is ready and willing 
to act. He stands still because he cannot see his way. He is 
uncertain because he cannot make out which of two plans he 
should choose. He is negligent, only because he is ignorant of 
what he ought to do, or of how it may best be done. Or if, in his 
physical impatience, such a man rushes forward, he fails to reach 
his aim because he is deficient in the materials for successful action. 
