1882.] TOOLS, IMPLEMENTS, ETC. 815 



either of the others, and as it is absohitely essential to the very- 

 existence of civilization, it is the most adaptative. It cannot be 

 killed in any country, short of the destruction of that country 

 itself and the extermination of its inhabitants. It modifies itself 

 to suit any conditions imposed upon it, and is shaped by every 

 force which touches it; whether physical, economical, social, or 

 political. It is perfectly plastic in its nature, it yields to every 

 pressure, and is responsive to every influence; under changing 

 conditions it is moulded into new shapes, but it is never de- 

 stroyed. Herein it is unlike the other classes of industries. 

 Manufactories, or mining, in a country may be suppressed or even 

 annihilated by hostile laws or war, or unsettled political conditions; 

 oppressive competition may prevent their starting, or if already 

 started and prosperous, may utterly destroy them. But not so 

 with Agriculture. Despite the worst of governments, the most 

 grinding of oppression, foreign war, domestic revolution, compe- 

 tition, even robbery and plunder, it will still go on in some shape. 

 It can modify its methods to suit the hardest conditions, but it 

 cannot be killed so long as there is any one left to dig. 



Take the history of Ireland as an illustration. When hostile 

 armies from without invaded the island and domestic wars from 

 within desolated their fields and destroyed their crops, the people 

 did not entirely starve. The invading armies were sometimes 

 supplied with scythes to cut down the growing grain, cavalry were 

 turned in to trample it down, the contents of their granaries 

 thrown out and trampled into the mud, or carried off, stacks 

 burned, cattle killed, all their other industries were destroyed, 

 but their agriculture adapted itself to even such hard conditions. 

 A new kind of plant, first brought to Europe by a slave trader 

 from America, but left in Ireland by Raleigh, in 1610, was 

 taken up, and potatoes became the crop, and the national food a 

 full hundred and fifty years before it was adopted by the common 

 people of other civilized countries. It probably saved the Irish 

 fx'om practical extinction, as a race. The new food-plant was well 

 suited to their climate and soil, it jrielded abundantly, the labor of 

 one man would feed thirty or forty, it was easily cultivated, it was 

 alike adapted to garden and to field cultivation, it was specially 

 adapted to hand cultivation; if the team was killed and plow 

 broken, only the spade was needed to prepare the soil, plant the 

 crop and to harvest it. But the special character it had which 

 most adapted it to their uses, was that it could not be destroyed 



