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