155 
MANURES. 
BY S. H. CARPENTER, MADISON. 
"Productiveness of crops and destructiveness of soil, are tlie two most prominent 
features of Amercican Agriculture.” 
“Justice can never be done to the soil until all classes study, understand, and obey 
the laws of nature.” [Dr. Lee, in Patent Office Report, 1852-53. 
Theory and practice should always go hand in hand.—Theory should 
develop principles, and practice should test their utility. Theory without 
practice is useless and often absurd, because purely speculative; and many 
theories in themselves beautiful when reduced to practice prove wholly 
impracticable; but practice without theory is devoid of progression, and 
revolves in the same beaten track forever. Thus the two should go hand 
in hand. 
The fact that Agriculture may derive lasting benefit from chemical in¬ 
vestigations is too generally received to need any corroborative testimony, 
and the labors of the French chemists in the analysis of soils and ma¬ 
nures, and a study of their mutual adaptation, has advanced agriculture 
to the rank of a science. Agriculture is indeed a science. It needs to be 
studied to be thoroughly understood, and I am aware of no valid reason 
why agriculture does not demand an education as thorough, and a mind 
as fully developed, as any of the so-called learned professions; but com¬ 
mon education can never make a good farmer, he needs the higher edu¬ 
cation that observation and experience alone can give—he needs both and 
can do without neither, but he need not avoid using the experiments and 
deductions of others. In a neighborhood of men possessed of mutual 
confidence, and where there is a great similarity of soil and climate, the- 
opinion of one intelligent observing farmer will carry more influence than 
all the learned recommendations of State or County Societies. 
Observation, then, is the great duty of the farmer, and adaptation is his 
great study. Acute observation and patient reflection on the facts, stored 
up by a faithful memory, must, in a great measure, rule his action, and 
form his practical education—an education without which scientific at¬ 
tainment is almost useless. Nevertheless, he need not doubt the fixed 
