Page 180 - madame-bovary

The landlady did not answer. Homais went on—
‘Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary
to have tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is nec-
essary rather to know the composition of the substances in
question—the geological strata, the atmospheric actions,
the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density
of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not. And
one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order
to direct, criticize the construction of buildings, the feeding
of animals, the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame
Lefrancois, one must know botany, be able to distinguish
between plants, you understand, which are the wholesome
and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive and
which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow
them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one
must keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and
public papers, be always on the alert to find out improve-
ments.’
The landlady never took her eyes off the ‘Cafe Francois’
and the chemist went on—
‘Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that
at least they would pay more attention to the counsels of
science. Thus lately I myself wrote a considerable tract, a
memoir of over seventy-two pages, entitled, ‘Cider, its Man-
ufacture and its Effects, together with some New Reflections
on the Subject,’ that I sent to the Agricultural Society of
Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being
received among its members—Section, Agriculture; Class,
Pomological. Well, if my work had been given to the pub-

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