224 
The Present State of Agriculture 
order to free them from the hurtful animal matter they contained, 
and extensive manufactories of purely mineral manures were esta- 
blished, by which vast fortunes in a brief space were expected to 
be realised. 
But this mineral-matter opinion has also received its death- 
blow, and we are again on the old highway of experience — taking 
Theory, it is true, into our counsels, appointing him our consult- 
ing chemist, but not allowing him to overrule our deliberations, 
or to persuade us that his atmospheric railway and his magnetic 
locomotives are better than the tried lines of Hudson and the 
trustworthy engines of Stephenson. 
I might advert to numerous other theoretical opinions, which, 
though lingering still among us, have been more or less satis- 
factorily disproved. Such as that the ash of the same plant 
always contains the same per-centage of oxygen in its bases ; that 
gypsum acts only by fixing ammonia from the atmosphere; that 
common salt enters and remains as such in plants; that the ana- 
lysis of soils leads to no useful practical result;* that manures 
should be prepared in a less soluble form, that the rains may not 
wash them out of the soil ; and so on — but time will not pei mit 
me to enter further into detail. It is sufficient to have satisfied 
you by the above instances, that in the way of correcting our agri- 
cultural theory we are also progressing, and within the last lew 
years have made some respectable advances. 
FoiirtJi. Turn now to the analytical researches in connexion 
with agriculture which the last five years have carried on in the 
various laboratories of Europe. Numerous gaps have been filled 
up, old analyses have been rejjeated and corrected, and valuable 
data of various kinds have been accumulating by which our theo- 
retical views are to be amended and widened, and our general 
husbandrv improved. It is true that many of these analyses, like 
our experiments in the fiild, have been made without the neces- 
sary skill, and without a due attention to all the desirable pre- 
* In this branch of applied science I know oC few things moie difficult 
than 1o give a safe and useful practical interpretafion to the numerical 
results obtained iVom the analysis of a soli ; and I can well understand the 
sources of the opinion that the analysis of a soil is of no use. It requires 
much knowledge of practical agriculture to see their value or to under- 
stand what the nund:)ers indicate. Hence the rash advice, on the one 
hand, which proceeds so often from young laboratories: and the absolute 
inability to advisp in the matter, which is felt by the clear-lieaded and 
experienced chemist on the other. When a really well-instructed chemist 
ventures to pronounce the minute an;l rigorous analyses of soils of no use, 
I only feel regiet that the weight of his opinion should be thrown in the 
way of a means of agricultural improvement, which, if he knew more of 
practice, he would see was not only largely available but in many cases 
almost indispensable to a safe expenditure of money upon the land. 
