Quantitative Analysis for Agriculture Science

The time is, happily, past when “Chemistry for Medical Students,” Quantitative Analysis for Engineers” and similar titles, indicating treatises on the spoon-feeding of special dishes of easy chemical cookery to the classes of persons indicated, met any very general demand on the part of teachers. Even in our highly specialized chemical science of today and in its enormously diversified applications to industrial and economic problems, we recognize the futility of attempting to train students for technical or professional careers by teaching them only the mechanical notions and processes of chemistry without the scientific development of fundaments. The authors have tried to keep this idea in view in the compilation of this book. The discussions of special methods (largely “official”, wherever applicable) for the analysis of materials of prime importance to chemical students of agricultural materials and of agricultural problems forms an important portion of the book; but we subscribe very heartily to the belief that one of the things most needed by scientific agriculture today is an increasing body of agricultural chemists who understand the importance of desiring to know why matters are thus and so.