Page:Memoir of George B. Wood, M. D., LL.D.djvu/25

 in science or in art, but always refuses to accept it simply because it is new; which believes everything which is proven by sufficient evidence, but nothing without evidence, whatever its attraction to the fancy, the intellect, or even the moral sense.

Dr. Wood's other papers, published in the Proceedings of this Society, were upon the subject of his observations and experiments, carried on through several years, upon his farm at Greenwich, in regard to the fertilizing and renewing action of the alkali potassa on the growth of fruit-trees, potatoes, wheat and other plants. The addition of wood ashes empirically to certain soils under cultivation, has long been a common practice in many places. By the chemical analysis of plants and of the earth in which they grow, as Dr. Wood mentions, their mutual physiological relations have, especially since the investigations of Liebig, been generally understood. But the merit of Dr. Wood's observations is, that they have furnished means of definite experimental demonstration, upon a considerable scale, of the practical application of this part of the chemical physiology of plants, in a manner productive of direct agricultural and horticultural profit.

Every inquiry of such a kind is, of course, of a complex nature, and the inferences derived from it must be properly collated and correlated with other facts and laws, which may qualify both their interpretation and their application. But the scientific and practical value of such investigations is beyond doubt;