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Home Extracts. 
Extracts from Professor Johnston’s Lecture on the 
APPLICATION OF SCIENCE TO AGRICULTURE, DELIVERED 
at the York Meeting of the Royal 
Agricultural Society. 
At the York Meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society, Pro- 
fessor Johnston delivered, to a large and influential body of gen- 
tlemen and agriculturists, a lecture “ On the application of science 
to agriculture,” in the De Grey rooms. The Earl of Yarborough, 
the President of the Society, was in the chair, and he briefly intro- 
duced the lecturer to the meeting. 
Professor Johnston commenced his lecture by remarking, that 
it was a striking circumstance in vegetable growth, that some 
plants were seen to thrive on one kind of soil only, on one geolo- 
gical kind of formation. They would meet with them in abun- 
dance in one country or district of Europe, where chalks, or marls, 
or limestone, or similar sandy salt-bearing soils, occur ; while in the 
rest of Europe you seek for them in vain. On soils of almost every 
kind were corn-growing plants, which find their support on every 
geological formation. Was it illogical to perceive, by this startling 
fact, an evidence that the Deity wills that man should subdue and 
people the whole earth ? While inquiring into this fact, he would 
make two further observations ; first, that the corn and herbage do 
not grow with equal luxuriance on all soils, or give an equal re- 
turn ; and, secondly, that on the same soils on which, when left to 
themselves, they grow in an unhealthy manner, they prosper when 
they are attended to and properly cared for by man. Was it illogical, 
therefore, to suppose that the Deity intends the soil to be tilled, not 
only with the sweat of the brow merely, but by the intellect and the 
ingenuity of man ; and that mental should combine with bodily in- 
dustry everywhere to obtain the means of sustaining human life 1 
They could not walk through the rural districts, and look at the 
young corn in spring, without being struck with the varying green 
as they went from enclosure to enclosure. The sickly yellow and 
the healthy green each clearly and distinctly express the natural 
defects of the soil, and the careful attention of the husbandman. * 
Having alluded to the difference in the appearance of crops, 
Professor Johnston directed attention to the influence of knowledge 
when brought to bear on the science of agriculture, and to the evils 
arising from the want of it. He viewed this defective knowledge 
in two aspects — ignorant, as individuals, in comparison to what 
