RECAPITULATION. 
31 
8. A large proportion of the weight of all living bodies is water : four-fifths of an animal 
is lost by drying. So also in some of the most important products of vegetable life, a 
very large amount has to be set down to water. These facts prove the importance 
of water; and it surprises every one, when he is told for the first time that highly 
organized animals, weighing twenty and thirty pounds, when dried, have only a few 
grains of saline ash : they are vesicles of animated sea water. 
9. Many persons have been mistaken in their notions of scientific husbandry ; or they have 
failed to seize upon the higher idea embraced in the investigations of the philosophic 
farmer. We can regard scientific husbandry as an investigation of the mutual adapta¬ 
tions of the three kingdoms of nature to each other, and of the methods of applying 
fixed principles to practice. No other method of farming, but that founded on 
adaptations fixed in nature by its Great Author, can be successful, and repay the 
efforts of the laborer. Some of these methods are easily discovered, and have ever 
been used : others are not so accessible, and require other sources of knowledge for 
their discovery. Chemistry has in this way become the handmaid of agriculture, and 
has already unfolded new and most important principles in the employment of this 
first and chiefiest of arts . 
