Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1871-02-09

PREJUDECEs. AGAINST sCIENTI.
FLO 4GRECULTUBE. 4

PREJUDECKsS AGAINST ECIENTI.
FLO AGRICULTURE. s7 =
Persons who ridicule the appropriation
of portions of newspapers TO the discus
sion of agricultural science, are either
blind to the value of such information,
or Indifferent to the Development of the
most essential department of national in
dustry. There is among large proper
ton of the tillers of the soil, an unrea-
soning prejudice against book farming,
as it is called, and when such persons find
leading journals indoctrinated with the
same foolish prejudices, they are harden
ed in their belief and heedlessly continue
to reject information essential to indi-
vidual success and general prosperity.
Agriculture is the bssis of all wealth;
without it no other pursuit can prosper,
and vet no other leading industry has
been SO greatly neglected by those who
pursue it, or so little fostered by govern
ment. In the South, this neglect, hereto
fore, was chargeable, in part to its
peculiar system of labor, and, in part, to
the value of its staples; slave labor was
deemed incompatible with scientific expert
ments, ard the demand for cotton, sugar
and tobacco was thought to be more prof.
tably met by the employment of muscle,
than through the agency of agricultural
chemistry. But with the radical changes
effected in our system of labor, seems
growing conviction in the minds of plan
tiers of the absolute necessity for less
muscle and more practical knowledge.
This conviction suggests an inquiry into
the relations between science and produc-
ton, and between increased fertility aud
diminished labor, as applied to the cult
walton and yield of given number of
acres. To check this inquiry by treating
it with ridicule, instead of meeting it by
supplying the needed information, is
neither witty, nor wise, nor patriotic.
But it may be that writers on sgricul-
ture sometimes err in giving lessons in
agricultural chemistry, to new beginners,
and discourage inquiry and defeat expert
ment by making both impossible to the
uninitiated. For instance, they may be
told that nitrogen and phosphoric acid
are the first elements of fertility that are
exhausted in all soils; that water and car
bonic acid are the chief products of vege-
table decomposition, and that the liberia
ton of this acid enables it to attack and
render soluble, in water, the silicates of
potash and bone Phosphstes-most i'm
portant elements of fertility. But in
making these statements no practical
knowledge is impaired, because it is CIV
en- in an unknown tongue. But if you
tell the same person that subsoiling brings
to the surface, elements of fertility, never
before subjected to the action of light,
heat and air; that it affords reader es-
cape to surplus moisture in wet seasons,
and retains that moisture in seasons of
drought, you propose an experiment
which any farmer can try, and implant
in him desire to test theories by practical
Again: if you tell the uninitisted that
everything that rots-whether animal or
out during the process
of decomposition valuable elements of
fertility; that the waste water about
dwellings and the kitchen, even the sweep
ing of the yard should be thrown upon
the manure pile, to increase its bulk and
quality, he feels that he can find out the
truth of your assertion by following your
suggestion, and that he cannot fail in the
experiment by reason of unknown terms
and directions not understood.
We would, by no means, be understood
as wishing writers on agriculture to con-
fine themselves to such simple suggestions
and statements of fact unsustained by
practical experiments and the deductions
of chemical analysis. There are dis
persed through the earth men of scientific
sttsinments, with ample means TO enable
them to play the part of experimental
farmers and to illustrate the great i'm
portance and profit of the application of
principles TO the cultivation of
the soil. Through such examples, agri-
cultural chemistry may become popu-
larized information, and the faculty of
imitation and close observation make
farmers of men who cannot ex-
plain the first principles of the system
they may have adopted.
This view of the subject supposes the
absolute necessity for scientific trestises
on farming, but as in schools there are
senior and junior classes TO which lessons
should be given adapted to their capacity
and progress, 50 in farming there are ad-
vanced and beginning classes, to each of
which there are appropriate lessons in the
science of agricultural chemistry.
MORE ABOUT FRUIT TREES.
A oo,o M