THE RISE OF AGRICULTURE. 71 



gravelly, sandy bottom of an ancient lake. South Germany 

 is rugged with mountains. The climate, over a good part of 

 the entire region, is damp, chilly and tormented by bleak 

 winds. But a persevering and intellectual people have kept 

 on learning that lesson of Mother Earth ; and she has plente- 

 ously rewarded them according to their deserts. Here are 

 guide and encouragement to us poor occupants of a country 

 that long ages ago was subsoiled by the glaciers ; and a 

 glacier, let me tell you, is a plough that subsoils a little too 

 deep and brings all the gravel and rocks to the top. Our 

 German cousins, however, are every whit as ill off; and yet 

 they make the crops grow. We will not sneer at our own 

 efforts. It will not do to sneer at such shows of fruit and 

 vegetables as we to-day have seen. But let us all in all 

 honesty confess that we are partial farmers, working much by 

 rule of thumb, doing some things extremely well, and failing 

 childishly in others. Our agriculture is nowhere thorough 

 and well proportioned. Here is a man who will raise prize 

 strawberries, and his apple-trees, hard by, will be full of cat- 

 erpillar webs. Another excels in onions, while his starved 

 potato-field is buried with weeds. In these respects our 

 transatlantic friends do better. You may start from Florence, 

 in Italy, and walk for miles along the valley of the Arno, with- 

 out seeing a fruit-tree cut by insects, or a weed in a vegetable 

 bed, or a square yard of arable soil without some crop on it. 

 It may be that the peasants are driven to careful husbandry 

 by poverty, and that they work with antiquated tools. At 

 all events, they give a lesson to us who have money and fine 

 implements. ' 



