GRAIN AND GRASS SEED. 157 



profit or her best quality of milk for her calves and the 

 farmer's household? Cau the farmer afford to raise any 

 quality of grasses inferior to those we propose they should 

 raise after their golden harvest of wheat? — rich, succulent 

 ffrasses, charo;ed with all the elements the animal constitution 

 imperatively demands ; grasses from which the cow can 

 elaborate the proper nutriment for her young and have a 

 surplus on which to thrive herself. When grasses will thus 

 enable the cow to thrive and yield her daily store for the life 

 of others, fed on the same grasses, the beauty of the God of 

 nature will be upon the rest of his herd, in health and vigor 

 and in growth and continued improvement ; while the house- 

 holds are blessed who feed on the goodly products of the 

 dairy and the flesh of these goodly animals. 



The families and herds of New England have not suffered 

 as yet, as they would have sufi'ered, had not the flour and 

 cracked wheat and graham and shorts and corn from unex- 

 hausted soils poured in upon them as a flood. But will this 

 flood of life always flow ? The same greed that has exhausted 

 State after State will soon exhaust the rest. Then, if not in 

 wisdom before, there must be earnest work in feeding the 

 soil, in laying the hand upon everything that can be converted 

 into plant-food. And soils exhausted by wheat and grasses 

 must be fed with lime till milch cows no longer pine away 

 and eat old bones. 



When the bummers in farming have exhausted the last 

 State, then the lack felt by animals on worn-out soils can no 

 longer be supplied from abroad. The mighty nations that 

 have been destroyed by some insignificant barbarous tribe, 

 the historian tells you, had become effeminate on high living. 

 Whereas, had he told you it was low living, living on the 

 products of exhausted soils, it would have been nearer the 

 truth. Their effeminacy was akin to what the cow feels fed 

 on June grass. A land flowing with milk and honey is no 

 rhetorical flourish, no poetic effusion, but fact. The two God 

 joined together. The soil that yields the choicest feed for the 

 dairy blossoms abundantly, yielding its sweets to the busy 

 bee. The glory of the flowering field, the perfection of 

 beauty in the families and flocks and herds ; these things of 

 beauty, above all others, Heaven designed should be a joy 



