360 Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
man has no control. Nature has established their relative adap¬ 
tations, and placed them under laws that will keep them undis¬ 
turbed in their work through all the coming future. It is with 
matter that man is most concerned. It is matter that nature ex¬ 
pects man to furnish. Give me matter , says nature to man, and I 
will fill your barns with plenty. The interests, then, of agricul¬ 
ture, and of agriculturists, must depend to a very great extent on 
a knowledge of matter, and the necessary conditions in which it 
must be furnished. A mere glance at matter in this direction is 
about all that I shall attempt to do in this paper. 
Those of you who have examined the specimens from the veg¬ 
etable kingdom on the one hand, and the specimens from the min¬ 
eral kingdom on the other as they are arranged side by side in this 
room, can hardly fail to notice a faint resemblance, if nothing 
more, between the products of the two kingdoms, and are ready to 
ask, perhaps, if they are not in some way related. In our investiga¬ 
tions in the mineral kingdom, we often wander along the line 
where these two kingdoms meet, and where specimens from each 
are beautifully arranged, as physical forces only can arrange them, 
in the museum of nature. Presented in this light, it is impossible 
not to recognize kindred ties ; but what they are, does not appear 
to the casual observer, and are brought to light only by scientific 
investigation. 
We notice, however, that between the forms of matter we call 
minerals and the forms of matter we call vegetables, there is a 
line sharply drawn, so that the products of the mineral kingdom 
can never pass, by gradation, into the products of the vegetable 
kingdom. The line that separates between these kingdoms, is the 
line that separates between inorganic and organized matter; and 
between these, nature has fixed a great gulf, so that the one can 
never pass over to the other. But as we wander away from this 
line, and from the individual mineral, and vegetable, to the mate¬ 
rial of which they are composed, this line becomes less distinct, 
and the two kingdoms begin to look like graded departments of 
nature’s workshop; departments that are separate and distinct 
from each other, while the material from the one may pass into the 
other to be used for higher purposes. 
In the lower department (the mineral kingdom), we find one of 
