66 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



what a track you are on, and what begins to open before you. It will 

 be impossible for you to master it without winding into the central mys- 

 teries of chemistry, without comprehending the most intricate balances 

 of meteorology, fathoming the splendid and complicate marvels of 

 light ; without understanding the beneficence of the changes of sea- 

 sons, and the dependence of the earth on the despotic benignity of 

 the sun. Modern chemistry has made every grain field the scene of be- 

 witching and orderly miracle. And when the farmer begins to study the 

 relations of all other seeds to their products — to follow the processes by 

 which a squash-germ so speedily prepares and feeds its mighty globes, 

 and the acorn develops into its slowly compacted sturdiness, and the bit- 

 ter peach stone, with its poison, builds the twigs that nourish such nec- 

 tar, and the little flake shaken out from the small pine cone in Calaveras 

 becomes competent to rear its column thirty feet at the base and three 

 hundred feet in the air — the moment he begins to study the variety in 

 the vitality of seeds, a magic is opened to him more powerful, more 

 subtle, more delicate, more entrancing, than the story in the Arabian 

 Nights of the giant that rose in mist and took solid shape out of the 

 little earthern jar. The ' ; Grizzly Giant " of Mariposa is mostly built of 

 water. Its thews are compacted out of exhalations. It is steam trans- 

 muted into hundreds of tons of timber, defying for two thousand years 

 the force of gravitation — steam, knotted into substance older than the 

 English Empire, by the persuasion of a filmy seed and the delicate 

 fingers of light. 



Something of these processes, something of this poetry, every farmer 

 must know who would be master of his calling. He must know what 

 are the relations of soil, and air, and moisture, to the growth of bis pro- 

 ducts; what food the soil itself furnishes to each vegetable, each fruit 

 tree, each vine, each species of grain ; what are the habits, and the needs, 

 and the exposures to disease of each berry, root, or leaf, from which he 

 expects his profit; and what elements must be returned to the land to 

 compensate the waste of its bounty, and thus secure his capital intact. 



It is in relation to this last point that the deeper science, and the 

 nobler dignity, and the immense responsibility of agriculture, rise into 

 notice. The wheat field, studied in one season, supplies vast knowledge 

 and entrancing poetry. To keep the wheat field productive for thirty 

 years in succession, requires very careful study of the land, intimate 

 knowledge of the relations of its mineral composition to the structure of 

 the wheat stalk and seed, and an economy that is wise from root to 

 crown. Ordinary labor the most faithful, the most temperate, the most 

 devoted, with the most elaborate implements of tillage and reaping 

 which modern skill has devised, cannot keep a grain farm whose crops 

 are exported productive at a high level for a generation. There must 

 be knowledge, accurate and thoroughly digested knowledge, to superin- 

 tend the most conscientious labor, knowledge which accepts and treats 

 the farm as a trust. 



The Creator who gave the globe to Adam, with the command to dress 

 it and keep it, has connected economy with its fertilitj r . Economy 

 lies at the base of high and permanent civilization. Where a river rises 

 every year, overflows its banks, and renews the elements which the land 

 has expended into crops, men are absolved from the duty and the need 

 of caring for the soil. God takes the capital into his own keeping, and 

 notifies man that he will prevent its waste. But where this is not done, 

 men are notified, just as plainly, that they must repair the capital and 

 preserve it at a point where the returns will be generous and perpetual. 



