in its Relations to Chemistry and Geolocjy. 
227 
fully occupied and cultivated by one society, or adequately super- 
intended by the same directing body. Among those who wil- 
lingly support the general objects of our agricultural societies, 
there are many who feel no interest in, and have no wish to pro- 
mote the purely scientific or chemical branch. These persons 
will always be a clog upon the wheels of those who are more 
zealous for this department, and will stand in the way of the 
appropriation of means from the general fund for the special en- 
couragement of it. 
There is, therefore, in a separate society, the advantage which 
experience has so often shown to accompany the possession of a 
special secretary* and board of managers, united in desires and 
in sympathies, zealous for one object only, pushing it forward 
as their exclusive duty, and pressing alike now on one another, 
now on their working officers, and now on the public. Un- 
divided by other claims on their time, their energy, or their 
resources, I think the cause of scientific agriculture would be 
surer to progress, and safer in the hands of such an independent 
body. 
It is impossible, however, that a more direct patronage of this 
branch on the part of the Highland Society can lead to anything 
but good in the end. The very acknowledgment of its import- 
ance which the present movement on their part implies, and the 
publications and discussions to which it has led, are themselves 
an important help towards its advance. 
I need not trouble you with any detail as to the greater extent 
to which other branches of science are now made to contribute to 
the advancement of agriculture. Ten years have scarcely elapsed 
since the general relations of geology to agriculture were first 
systematically pointed out, — yet you all know how close and in- 
teresting, and generally intelligible that relation has become, 
since the discovery of the fossil phosphate of lime in the marls of 
the green-sand and the crag, in quantities which admit of their 
being economically collected for agricultural purposes.j Veget- 
* What amount of encouragement, for example, or of support to be de- 
rived from a direct union with the Royal Agricultural Society, which some 
have proposed, could compensate to the English Agricultural Chemistry- 
Association for the loss of the special services'of their Honorary Secretary, 
Mr. Huxtable ? ^ 
•i' This abundance of phosphates in our marls should also occur in some of 
our limestones. I havehad many examined lately with that view ; and while 
in the magnesian limestones of the county of Durham I have hitherto found 
only 0-015 to 0-07 per cent, of tribasic phosphate of lime; I have fiora 
one blue mountain limestone from Lanarkshire, obtained as much as 1-39 
per cent , and in the burned lime as it comes from the kiln 2-33 per cent. 
A ton of this burned lime, therefore, which is full of fossils, contains as 
much phos-phate of lime as a hundredweight of bones. This phosphate 
cannot be without its use both in adding to the good effects of the lime 
and in modifying the apparent action of bones upon land to which such 
Q 2 
