66 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



if he be calm and gentle, and especially if he be addressing a 

 young ladies' Sunday school, he is sure to use the French, 

 Latin and Greek derivatives wherewith he has painted and 

 padded the gnarled old stock. Not forever were those tall 

 barbarians to stalk through the dark forests of beech and fir. 

 Their destiny was written on a golden tablet, and a power 

 stronger than the sword — the power of Christianity — was to 

 bring their proud knee to the neglected earth. From the 

 Catholic missionaries and monks of those remote times came 

 the first lesson in agriculture to their savage neophytes. It 

 was a little spark, but the wood of the beacon lay ready and 

 blazed with a clear and increasing flame. In this and in all 

 other arts they have ever since gone rapidly on with labori- 

 ous study and untiring toil. These slow boys bent at last to 

 their task, and after eighteen hundred years of schooling, 

 they have beaten the spry, quick boys, and stand at the head 

 of their class. Not alone in their native plains of Germany, 

 or among the sand dunes of Jutland, or by the fiords of Nor- 

 way, are these Northmen now found. They are everywhere, 

 from Iceland to Australia; from England, through America 

 to Hindostau. 



And now let us ask how, from such mean beginnings, they 

 have come to results so grand. Plainly the power lay coiled 

 within them like a spring, which begins to push when the 

 clamp is taken ofi". But what special working had that spring 

 by which it came to beat other springs? The answer is, that 

 the Germanic mind is a scientific mind, and has always been 

 so from the day when its form grew to be recognizable. 

 What is scientific, and what is science? They are words on 

 every tongue, yet not one tongue in twenty will answer the 

 question aright. The nineteen wrong tongues will hasten to 

 say that science first may be defined as the opposite or the 

 complement of practice ; and, secondly, as abstract theory 

 based on thought, and distinguished from workinj^ based on 

 experience. Why run so far for a reply and put it in so 

 many words when a short one is at hand ? " Science " is 

 knoivledge, and " scientific " is hioioing ; just that, and 

 nothing less or more. The mind of the Northmen has grown 

 great and strong, because it is knowing, and still seeks 

 knowledge. 



