SUNSHINE ON THE FARM. 



The farmer, above all others engaged in industrial pur- 

 suits, should be an intelligent student of nature. He should 

 love to study the laws under which the whole machinery of 

 the organic and inorganic worlds is acting. He should be- 

 come better acquainted with the secret forces which exert 

 such stupendous changes in matter, and which are so inti- 

 mately connected with vegetable growth and decay. It is 

 not enough that the farmer studies methods by which increase 

 of crop-results are secured ; it is not enough that he learns 

 to feed his animals under conditions which give the highest 

 pecuniary returns ; it is not enough that the best varieties of 

 fruits are produced in his orchards ; he should study the 

 nature of the energies and forces by the movement of which 

 his labors are crowned with success. I have alluded spe- 

 cially to silent and unseen agencies, and to this class belong 

 the energies of the sunbeam. Without sunshine on the 

 farm, all the labors of the husbandman are abortive and 

 fruitless. We may fancy to ourselves conditions where sun- 

 light might be replaced by artificial means. Let us bring to 

 view a farm where the fields are rich with the best forms of 

 plant-nutriment, where the rain falls in desired measure, 

 where warm winds diffuse a genial and pervasive heat, but 

 where the sunshine never comes. We may light up the 

 broad acres with electric lamps, so that they are illuminated 

 as brilliantly as the streets of our great cities ; but with 

 artificial light the most potent that man can invent, the fields 

 would be practically valueless, and successful husbandry 

 abortive. 



The experiments of Dr. Siemens in 1880, in the employ- 

 ment of the electric light as a substitute for solar light in 



* Lecture delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Board of Agriculture at 

 Lowell. 



