574 
professor Johnston’s lecture. 
others know, or defective in knowledge compared with what is to 
be discovered. There, no doubt, existed in the heads of the 
smaller number of successful and practical men a large amount of 
information unknown to the great mass of farmers, but which, he 
shewed, ought to become the property of all. It was true that 
meetings like the present were a kind of large Lancasterian school, 
which ministered to their neighbours such information as it was 
desirable they should know. * * 
Instead, therefore, of addressing them in the present lecture upon 
the elementary and scientific principles which bore upon the ques- 
tion of practice, or occupying their time by discussing the details 
of some more or less important branch of rural art, he believed he 
should consult more the importance and dignity of this national 
meeting by endeavouring to set before them a brief outline of the 
actual condition of scientific agriculture, and especially of the pre- 
sent state of rural economy in relation to chemistry, and he hoped 
to do so plainly ; that, while it should be generally interesting to 
such as took wider views, it would, at the same time, be as intelli- 
gible and instructive to all as a mere elementary address could be. 
There were three distinct questions which would naturally arise 
in their minds : First, what had been the progress in amount and 
in kind which scientific agriculturists had made amongst themselves 
during the last ten years; Secondly, what was the actual condi- 
tion of this advanced knowledge at the present moment ; and, 
Thirdly, what should now, in consequence of that condition, be espe- 
cially done in order further to make easy its advancement. 
As to the first of these questions, were they to judge from the 
character of agricultural literature of 1848, compared with that of 
1838, they would conclude that a vast stride had been made. At 
the latter period the aid of science was all but scouted amongst the 
older agriculturists in different parts of England; and the strongest 
of the agricultural periodicals that ever touched upon the subject 
at all, for the most part undervalued the worth of natural science 
to the farmer, and ridiculed the pretended value of chemistry. - 
Now, however, the weekly journal was considered badly conducted 
which in every number did not embody some scientific and espe- 
cially some chemical information. Scarcely a provincial paper 
which' boasted of an agricultural corner, but indulged freely in 
chemical nomenclature as being more agreeable to the taste and 
within the easy comprehension of almost every farmer, while the 
bearings of geology and physiology on rural industry were dis- 
cussed by countless correspondents in the increasing, though still 
limited, agricultural periodicals. But though, in a free country 
like this, the periodical press must follow the public leacl, and must 
be regarded as a free and general index of the time and tone of 
