AGRICULTURAL HEAD-WORK. 29 



ing law does it happen that clover and corn, and other plants 

 most affected by the evaporating power of the sun's rays, are 

 always the quickest to catch the dew in early evening, and seem 

 to gather so large a supply of the moistiire which the night 

 gently carries over the earth ? These arc not accidents. 

 Great laws are not fortuitously beneficent. And such facts 

 are calculated to set a farmer upon a course of observation in 

 summer and of thinking in winter. They will give to the con- 

 templative person aniple head-work for many long winter 

 evenings. 



It is not, you perceive, for mere idle curiosity that these 

 ifiquiries are to be pressed ; and even supposing no advantage 

 to accrue from the mental discipline, they may redound to the 

 thrift of the life. The farmer is very much at the mercy of 

 the elements. Franklin has told him how to secure his barn 

 from lightning ; but there are yet many farmers in this genera- 

 tion too wise to learn of Franklin, and the insurance offices 

 will pay for one-half, at least, when the electricity has kindled 

 a flame which consumes the whole, and forty or fifty tons of 

 uninsured hay, and twenty head of cattle. 



Professor Espy, some years dgo, published a valuable work 

 on the phenomena of storms, and it was easily travestied by 

 saying that he proposed to manufacture showers to order, in 

 dry seasons. But his book is certainly not the less able and 

 interesting, and valuable, that it contemplates no expedient 

 reaching to such an extent of folly. 



The study of such natural phenomena is not calculated to 

 make us independent of nature, but it may oftentimes enable 

 us to take nature at advantage. Without it, we are helpless. 

 The duck knows when to plume her feathers for the shower ; — 

 the farmer does not know, half an hour beforehand, when to 

 put a canvas over his half-made hay. An ant builds up her 

 house many hours in advance, to keep off the rain ; the farmer, 

 if it happened to rain the day before, is so sure of fair weather 

 that he pulls off the shingles, just in time to soak the inside of 

 the house or barn. How much observation and investigation 

 will do to enable us to escape such results of ignorance, we 

 shall better know when we have tried them. 



There is still one direction of strictly scientific investigation 

 which may claim a particular notice. I mean the careful study 



