comstock] NATURE-STUDY AXD AGRICULTURE 147 



in a prison of thick walls of selfishness, and looks ont on the 

 world through a window darkened by the bars of avarice. The 

 man who goes into the field in the morning with the conscious- 

 ness of the sunshine, and the song of birds, and the growing 

 green of the forests and meadows ; he who understands and is 

 a good comrade of the cunning old crow grubbing in the corn 

 field, or the meadow lark singing in the meadow ; the man who 

 is conscious of all the life and beauty about him will do his 

 work better, and know better how to protect his crops, and he 

 will have a richer harvest than the one who sees the dollar mark 

 on every leaf, and hears the chink of coin in every sound. 



Some years ago we received here a letter from a Canadian 

 farmer boy, and in this letter he says, " I have read your leaflet 

 entitled, ' The Soil, What It Is," and as I trudged up and down 

 the furrows every stone, every lump of earth, every sandy knoll, 

 every sod hollow had for me a new interest. The day passed, 

 the work was done, and I at least had had a rich experience." 

 Who would doubt that such a man having such thoughts would 

 plow a straighter furrow that he who sees only the earth he turns 

 and the horses which he perchance swears at as he goes on his 

 dull routine blinder than the mole whose wonderful galleried 

 house his plow disturbs. 



The ideal farmer is not the man who by chance and hazard 

 succeeds ; but he is the man who loves his farm and all that sur- 

 rounds it because he is awake to the beauty as well as to the 

 wonders which are there ; he is the man who understands as far 

 as may be the great forces of nature which are at work around 

 him, and, therefore, he is able to make them work for him. 

 For what is agriculture save a diversion of natural forces for the 

 benefit of man ? The farmer who knows these forces only when re- 

 stricted to his paltry crops and has no idea of their larger applica- 

 tion, is no more efficient as a farmer than would be an engineer 

 who knew nothing of his engine except how to start and stop it. 

 In order to appreciate truly his farm the farmer must needs begin 

 as a child with nature-study ; in order to be successful and make 

 the farm pay he must needs continue in nature-study ; and to 

 make his declining years happy and content and full of wide 

 sympathies and profitable thought he must needs conclude with 

 nature-study ; for nature-stud)- is the alphabet of agriculture, and 

 no word in that great vocation may be spelled without it. [From 

 The Conic!/ Countryman.] 



