The object of the present work is to offer to the farmer a concise outline of the general principles of Agricultural Chemistry. It has no pretensions to be considered a complete treatise on the subject. On the contrary, its aim is strictly elementary, and with this view I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to avoid unnecessary technicalities so as to make it intelligible to those who are unacquainted with the details of chemical science, although I have not hesitated to discuss such points as appeared essential to the proper understanding of any particular subject. The rapid progress of agricultural chemistry, and the numerous researches prosecuted under the auspices of agricultural societies and private experimenters in this and other countries, render it by no means an easy task to make a proper selection from the mass of facts In all cases numerical details have been given as fully as is consistent with the limits of the work; and it may be right to state that a considerable number of the analyses contained in it have been made in my own laboratory, and that even when I have preferred to quote the results of other chemists, they have not unfrequently been confirmed by my own experiments. University of Glasgow, |