THE PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE

Skilful practice is applied science.  This fact is illustrated in every chapter of the excellent and comprehensive work now before us [1].

In a previous article, (see the number for June 1842,) we illustrated at some length the connexion which now exists, and which hereafter must become more intimate, between practical agriculture and modern science.  We showed by what secret and silent steps the progress and gradual diffusion of modern scientific discoveries had imperceptibly led to great improvements in the agriculture of the present century—­by what other more open and manifest applications of science it had directly, and in the eyes of all, been advanced—­to what useful practical discussions the promulgation of scientific opinions had given rise—­and to what better practice such discussions had eventually led.  Above all, we earnestly solicited the attention of the friends of agriculture to what science seemed not only capable of doing, but anxious also to effect, for the further advance of this important art—­what new lessons to give, new suggestions to offer, and new means of fertility to place in the hands of, the skilful experimental farmer.

It is but a comparatively short time since that article was written, and yet the spread of sound opinion, of correct and enlightened views, and of a just appreciation, as well of the aids which science is capable of giving to agriculture, as of the expediency of availing ourselves of all these aids, which within that period has taken place among practical men, has really surprised us.  Nor have we been less delighted by the zeal with which the pursuit of scientific knowledge, in its relations to agriculture, has been entered upon in every part of the empire—­by the progress which has been made in the acquisition of this knowledge—­and by the numerous applications already visible of the important principles and suggestions embodied in the works then before us, (JOHNSTON’s Lectures and Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology.) But on this important topic we do not at present dwell.  We may have occasion to return to the subject in a future number, and in the mean time we refer our readers to the remarks contained in our previous article.

The truly scientific man—­among those, we mean, who devote themselves to such studies as are susceptible of important applications to the affairs and pursuits of daily life—­the truly scientific man does not despise the practice of any art, in which he sees the principles he investigates embodied and made useful in promoting the welfare of his fellow-men.  He does not even undervalue it—­he rather upholds and magnifies its importance, as the agent or means by which his greatest and best discoveries can be made to subserve their greatest and most beneficent end.  In him this may possibly arise from no unusual liberality of mind; it may spring from a selfish desire to see the principles he has established or made his own carried out to their legitimate extent, and their value established and acknowledged—­for it is the application of a principle that imparts to it its highest value.