92 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



Saxon race as compared with all other races or peoples upon 

 the globe. The home of the Anglo-Saxon, of course, is in 

 Great Britain. The Anglo-Saxon is made up of a mixture 

 of people from different portions of Northern Europe, but 

 we speak of him commonly as he has developed and mani- 

 fested himself in the island of Great Britain. That is the 

 Anglo-Saxon. Wherever he goes he shapes his environment 

 to suit himself. He is stronger than his environment. Half 

 of the life of the Anglo-Saxon is not made or controlled by 

 an environment, and yet much is determined by his environ- 

 ment, because some have not the vigor of others. So it 

 comes down to individuals. Some are so strong by heredity 

 that they control their environment and others, being weak, 

 they have come down from past generations shaped almost 

 entirely by that. So that what a man is is due to those two 

 forces, the force of heredity and the force of environment. 

 If that be true, the farmer has an advantage over any other 

 man. because more than any other man he shapes his environ- 

 ment, he controls his environment. His environment is made 

 up of two things, or, rather, his development is influenced in 

 this respect in two ways : First, he lives in direct contact with 

 nature; that is, he lives in the first place amid an environ- 

 ment as God made it. The Creator has made the world 

 beautiful and bright, and the farmer is right face to face with 

 it, and his environment is more directly from the hand of 

 God than the environment of any other man. So far. then, 

 so good, because God's works are always good. In the sec- 

 ond place, he makes up his own environment himself more 

 completely than any other man. What has a man who lives 

 up this street got to do with his environment? How can he 

 influence it to any great extent? He lives amid influences 

 and surroundings that he cannot control, and which he can- 

 not influence in any way whatever, or scarcely in any way, 

 whereas the farmer in his home controls his environment. 

 He can put around him those things which he likes to a great 

 extent, and he can remove those things which he does not 

 like. He does not get up in the morning and, as he looks 

 about him, say, " I wish that was not so," or that this thing 

 or that thing is bad. If he looks out and sees something that 

 is not as it ought to be he can go to work and make it as he 

 wishes, if he will. He can control his environment. There- 



