in its Relations to Chemistry and Geoloyij. 
•207 
ately from well-directed labour — and, if not yourselves, to repay 
your sons .at least for the outlay of money you may have incurred. 
Tliii-dli/. I was struck, in the third place, with the wide gaps 
and deficiencies which everywhere presented themselves in our 
analytical knowledge of matters connected with rural economy. 
Of the soil, the plant, and the animal — their chemical nature, 
their composition, their food — analysis, though long employed 
upon them in a desultory manner, had left much untouched 
which the farmer asks to know. The same was true of the che- 
mical history of animal and especially of vegetable life — a know- 
ledge of which appears every day more necessary to a secure 
practical progress. 
Besides these three main observations, I met also with nume- 
rous acknowledged facts in practical agriculture for which no ex- 
planation, in accordance with existing knowledge, had been, and 
as it appeared to me, coidd yet be given ; and it also occurred to 
me as somewhat remarkable, that, with the exception of botany, 
the other rapidly-progressing sciences of observation had been 
made use of in so small a degree to throw light upon the unintel- 
ligible and obscure in this most important of all the arts of life. 
Such were the points which especially presented themselves in 
a review of the state of our knowledge on this subject eight years 
ago. It was natural therefore to suggest to the friends of agricul- 
tural progress the adoption of means by which the deficiencies 
in regard to facts might be gradually supplied, the theoretical 
redundancies lopped off, and the gaps in our knowledge of prin- 
ciples in some measure filled up. 
It was first suggested therefore that accurate experiments in 
the field should be forthwith undertaken — made by weight and 
measure, and under varied circumstances ; and instructions were 
published explaining the kind of experiments it was desirable to 
perform, how they should be set about, and the immediate ends 
they might severally be expected to serve. 
It will at once occur to you, gentlemen, that the advantages 
likely to result from such precise experiments are by no means 
limited to the purposes for which they are immediately intended. 
They may or may not throw light on the points they were ex- 
pected to clear up ; but in either case they will suggest further 
experiments, and these again others, leading us on by a gradual 
progression to more extended acquisitions of knowledge. 
Besides, though the first, and to science perhaps the most im- 
portant, purpose of experimental research is to obtain facts which 
shall elucidate with certainty the causes of things, yet the prose- 
cution of it, in connexion with rural economy, is fitted also to 
give a new interest to farming — to introduce more careful habits 
of observing and recording — to awaken much new thought, and 
