USE OF MIND IN FARMING. 43 



influences, as they act in the great and momentous processes of 

 vegetable and animal growth. His use of mind here is his 

 strength, yea, his fortune. He may not know that he knows 

 this, and scientifically he may not know it, but he does, never- 

 theless, practically know and work it all up into real and beau- 

 tiful result. His education, in the midst of these great surface 

 elements, is imperceptibly but really progressive. Crude it 

 may be in the form, but mighty in the power of its expression. 

 In silent but eloquent tones it speaks in the luxuriant meadow, 

 the waving fields of golden-headed wheat, in acres of noble- 

 stalked and long-eared corn, in splendid shade trees, fruits and 

 flowers and flocks. He composes essays, not by measurement 

 of a tiny sheet of foolscap, but by the acre. Essays written, 

 not by pen, ink or type, but on the solid earth, by plough, 

 crowbar and axe ; essays which are literal " life thoughts." 



Thus, and in wise necessity arranged by a beneficent all- 

 directing Providence, the farmer is self-educated. His mind is 

 used in his work, and thus by his work is he educated. Hold- 

 ing fellowship with the earth, he knows the earth and the things 

 thereof. Were not this so, the cultivation of nature, only as it 

 sinks degraded and forlorn among Hottentots, Arabs, or savage 

 tribes, would cease. But most happily, gentlemen, is it true, 

 that law r s, principles and influences may be learned practically 

 and effectively by him who carefully and well works upon the 

 materials which those laws and principles govern. The farmer 

 is thus literally a scholar by his work, learning lessons taught 

 in the great out-door temple, or blue sky panoplied and green- 

 sodded free school of this ever jbeautiful world. 



Look at this law of educational farming in its actual being. 

 A farmer experiments in sub-ploughing and draining. He 

 learns that as the soil is deepened, the effect of manure is 

 increased ; the season of working it is prolonged, and the effects 

 of drought prevented. By experiment he learns all this, and 

 therefore knows it. The science of the same he may not know, 

 nor, in one sense, does he need it. The use of the science and 

 the effect of it are his. The gentleman agriculturist takes his 

 facts and explains them. Water, he says, is held in the soil 

 between the minute particles of earth. If these particles be 

 compressed, there is no space left for the water. Hence hard 

 or compact soils are little affected by water, compared with 



