ELEMENTS

OF

SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE,

OR THE

Connection Between Science

AND THE

ART OF PRACTICAL FARMING.

PRIZE ESSAY OF THE NEW YORK STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850,

BY JOHN P. NORTON,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Connecticut.

PREFACE.

This little treatise is an attempt to supply a great and growing want in our country; a want of some elementary work, that shall clearly and distinctly explain the great principles that are involved in the applications of science to agriculture. The necessity for such a work has become apparent to all who have engaged in the dissemination of knowledge upon this subject; to all who have endeavored to arouse the farming community, by bringing forward incitements to the study of this new science.

The agricultural interest is now awaking to a full sense of its deficiences, and demands imperatively, that knowledge, in clear and comprehensive forms, be placed within its reach.

We have large works of great merit, in Johnston's Lectures, and Stephens's Farmers' Guide; but these are too bulky for the man who has just begun to entertain the idea that there may, after all, be something learned from books. A small work of this kind is far more likely to attract his attention, and gradually to