240 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



make them all sick at once. The weather has become a local and 

 sanitary rather than a general meteorological study within a very 

 few years. 



Perhaps you will not agree with me that the highest type of 

 humanity possible under aboriginal conditions had been established 

 in this northern country. The millions of happy "savages" 

 knocked on the head by brutal discoverers in the warm West 

 India islands lead us reasonably to imagine that Columbus uncov- 

 ered a science of practical life there which colder northern and 

 equally crowded " civilized " communities have not yet learned. 

 That the peaceful inhabitants of those islands had already mas- 

 tered the problems of personal waste and nutrition, and were yet 

 no match in war for their more savage conquerors, does not prove 

 the former an inferior race in the sight of eternal goodness. 



The coming man, to make his title good, must incarnate all the 

 good that has gone before him. 



Perhaps we shall not agree in questioning whether the type of 

 humanity, under our own possibilities, has been established at its 

 highest. Did any civilization or barbarism ever have greater 

 cause for. or consciousness of, shame ? Frequent divorces, aban- 

 doned children, and so forth, show how some of us are losing 

 faith in the coming of the children of men in all their glory, every 

 time. Our v,'omen have as good a right — except we have broken 

 the eternal laws of goodness — to the highest honors of maternity 

 as the mothers of Israel had. 



The aboriginal American gentleman was a lofty and crafty char- 

 acter. He was born away above farming for a living. Possibly 

 the continent is producing his natural and scientific equals, but I 

 am afraid not superiors, for their day. A friend writes me how 

 in a recent trial of "malaria" in the Massachusetts courts, con- 

 flicting "scientific" and "expert" testimony only served to "con- 

 fuse the jury." Are our medical and legal experts too unskillful 

 to winnow mixed social science from chafE ? Are our courts and 

 juries too unlearned and ignorant, or did they know too well 

 which side their bread was buttered ? Either way, the people 

 suffer, civilization receives a shocking check, and public confidence 

 chokes, all the same, whether hung by the legal or medical horn 

 of a scientific "bull." 



Herbert Welch, one of our social agents among the Sioux, tells 

 us how an astute member of that tribe questions our government 



