Many horticulturists complain that certain fruits and seeds have "_run out_," or degenerated. Has the stately oak, the elm, or the cedar degenerated? No. Each has preserved its identity, and will continue so to do, at least just as the Divine Artist intended they should, unless man, by his fancied improvements, interferes; and here, reader, permit us to ask if you ever knew a piece of nature's mechanism improved by human agency. Can we make a light better adapted to the wants of animate and inanimate creation than that which the sun, moon, and stars afford? Whenever we attempt to improve on immutable laws, as they are written on the face of creation, that moment we prevent the full and free play of these laws. Hence the practice of grafting scions of delicious fruit-trees on stock of an inferior order compromises its identity; and successive crops will show unmistakable evidences of encroachment. A son of the lamented Mr. Phinney tells us that he had some very fine sows, that he was desirous of breeding from, with a view of making "improvements." He bred in a close degree of relationship: in a short time, to use his own expression, "their sides appeared like two boards nailed together." Does the farmer wish to know how to prevent seeds and fruit "running out"? Let him study chemistry. Chemistry furnishes the information; it also teaches the husbandman the fact, that to put a plant, composed of certain essential elements, on a soil destitute of those elements,--or to graft a scion, requiring a certain amount of sap or juice, on a stock destitute of such sap or juice, expecting that they will germinate, grow to perfection, and preserve their identity,--would be just as absurd as to expect that a dry sow would nourish a sucking pig. Agriculture being based on the equilibrium of the soils, a knowledge of chemistry is indispensable to every one who is desirous of keeping pace with the reforms of the age; for it is through the medium of that science alone that we are enabled to ascertain with certainty how this equilibrium is disturbed by the growth of vegetation. Then is it not a matter of deep interest to the farmer to know how this equilibrium is restored?