1902.] DISCUSSION. 77 



suppose that a scientist or a newspaper man or the prosperous 

 farmer, either one of them, can block out a line of educational 

 work that will help the discouraged man back on the mort- 

 gaged farm. You must go to him. You must get into close 

 touch with him. The best way I know of to do that is through 

 the institute speaker. You must lead that man's mind into 

 new channels and towards better methods before you can 

 help him. You can open his mind only through his questions. 

 Then is the opportunity to plant a new mental sprout, and to 

 teach him how to encourage it to grow. Do not send men 

 out on the institute platform that will pull that out by the 

 roots, and leave nothing there in its place. 



Now just one more illustration and then I am done. I 

 refer to this to show how sometimes a farmer will listen to a 

 scientist and fail to apprehend the point. There was a certain 

 State in this country where an entomologist went up and down 

 talking to the farmers a few years ago, and one day I got a 

 letter from a man in that section. It came with a special 

 delivery stamp on it. It said that there was a certain bug 

 eating up the strawberries there. He caught the bug running 

 away from the strawberry, and he sent me three samples and 

 asked me to tell him what it was, and what he could do. He 

 also sent some of the strawberry plants, so I could see the 

 work of this bug. The bugs were the common Croton water 

 bug. The strawberry plants had been eaten by a well-known 

 grub. At first thought that seems like a ridiculous thing, that 

 a common water bug would eat strawberry plants, but that 

 was as close as that man had got into the habit of observing. 

 He saw those little bugs running over the ground, around or 

 away from the plants, and he pulled up the plant and found 

 that something had eaten off the bottom of it. He jumped 

 to a conclusion. He put those two things together, I am 

 glad to say that I spent the best part of half an hour writing 

 that man and trying to show him what he wanted to know. 

 That shows the way in which you have got to get right down 



