The Oak and the Ash Leaf. 349 
connected with all the arts of life, ought to form a part of the 
education of those who wish to promote them, and benefit by 
them. In very school, whether intended for males or females, 
for the rich or for the poor, natural history should find a foremost 
place as an elegant and useful accomplishment. 
The culture of plants will become a comparatively easy process 
when we are better acquainted with their peculiar functions, and 
with the chemical elements which they require for their growth 
and maturation. We must not be.content with knowing what 
are their respective natural locations, climates, and seasons, but 
must learn what chemical gases each species imbibes from the 
atmosphere, through its leaves, and what substances from the soil, 
through its roots. " If a plant be distinguished by its containing 
a notable portion of soda, silica, &c., the soil in which it is to be 
grown must contain the elements, otherwise the attempt will be 
abortive," for a plant can no more create soda or silica within 
itself, than it can form water for its support, independent of the 
soil or atmosphere. From a knowledge of the principles, there- 
fore, a rational theory of agriculture may be formed; and what 
has hitherto been little better than an expensive and often dis- 
tressing system of trial and error, becomes a science guided by 
fixed laws. .Agriculture will always have to contend with the 
fluctuations of seasons and climate; but it is for human ingenuity 
to modify their influence, and this only can be effected by rational 
and scientific proceedure As yet, the science of Agriculture is 
in its infancy, but the time is not far distant when it will rank 
with other maturer branches of knowledge — when every soil will 
be systematically treated for the species of crop to be raised upon 
it — in short, when the farmer will sow and reap with as 
much security as the distiller produces his spirit. The value 
of the science of chemistry to the agriculturist, may be judged 
from the fact that when the great chemist, Lavoisier, took 
a quantity of land into his own cultivation, he very soon suc- 
ceeded in doubling its produce. — Jour, of Jig. 
The Oak and the Ash Leaf — Some observers of nature have 
broached the theory, that the future character of the summer is 
indicated by the relative periods at which the oak and the ash put 
forth their leaves in spring. If the oak has a start, a dry summer 
is generally productive of a good crop of wheat, it prevents the 
plant from exhausting itself in straw, and is propitious to the 
blooming and kerning process, and of course indispensable to its 
being well harvested. — Plym. Journal. 
