201 
CULTURAL CHEMISTRY. 
This heading, or title, is selected because the public have been accustomed 
to consider this science as applicable almost exclusively to the purposes of hus- 
bandry. We have heard much of Agricultural, but very little of Horticultural 
Analyses ; and yet if science be of any avail to the former, it cannot be of less 
importance to the latter. We have therefore chosen to generalise the subject, and 
shall endeavour to prove that that noblest of sciences, Chemistry, ought to 
be applied systematically, to the perfecting of the art of cultivation, in the most 
extended meaning of the term. In so doing it will be the object of the present 
article, to induce caution on the part of the reader, before absolute credence is given 
to any theory, however plausible it may appear, and however high the authority of 
the party by whom it may have been broached. Fortunately, for this purpose, we 
have just come into possession of one of the most faithful articles that has ever 
appeared, in the form of a “ Lecture delivered before the Royal Agricultural Society,” 
at the late York Meeting, by Professor Johnston. 
At a period not more remote than twelve years, little was known of Cultural 
Chemistry. Sir Humphrey Davy had endeavoured to appeal to it in his Lectures 
before the Board of Agriculture, but the attempt made little impression. A few 
books had been written by De Saussure and others, but the practical man knew 
nothing of them ; and, as in Agriculture, so in Gardening, its followers regarded 
their profession scarcely as a branch of book learning. “ The knowledge of it w^as 
generally transmitted directly from mouth to mouth ; and as it was rarely sought 
from books by those who practised it, so those who wrote, rarely committed to paper 
the details of what they had observed, or made their trials with a view to after 
publication.” “And yet,” as Mr. Johnston observed, “ a precise attention to facts, 
and a careful record of them is necessary;” for “ facts so ascertained and recorded are 
the very stepping-stones by which any sure advance can be made. Without them no 
safe opinions can be formed by ourselves, nor can the opinions of others be satis- 
factorily attested or fairly criticised.” 
Our readers who possess the early, and succeeding volumes of this Magazine, will 
do us the justice to acknowledge, that at every fair opportunity we have, while advo- 
cating the cause of pure science, been urgently solicitous to obviate the delusive 
tendency of all those experiments, and the theories founded upon them, which were 
instituted upon principles not consistent with those of nature, and subversive of the 
vital function. The practical gardener has little time for reading, and his salary is 
far too limited, to admit of the purchase of books so expensive, as those descriptive of 
Chemical Analyses. The amateur, on the other hand, who is eager in the pursuit of 
knowledge, can by no means undertake a series of experiments upon a thousand 
subjects, all of which admit of perplexing modifications, any one of which, to be 
clearly unravelled, might require the labour of a year, with an expenditure of money 
VOL. XV. NO. CLXXVII. D D 
