Probable Future Advances in Evolution 839 



similar tracts in Africa and Asia, have been changed from deserts 

 into smiUng gardens, while the river dams of Assouan and 

 other centers have changed uncertain fertihty into assured 

 crop return. What would the future not bring, along similar 

 lines, were the world's soldiery and the military wealth that 

 upholds its armaments to be directed into such channels? 



Another phase of plant culture and of food supply has too 

 little been considered. We refer to the weeds of cultivation. 

 Where weeds and useful plants grow side by side, the former 

 absorb what the latter could use. We emphatically assert 

 that weeds can be and will be exterminated. By exercise 

 of moral action and neighborly sympathy, the wild carrot, 

 the dock, the ragweed, the "tares" of parable, can all be sub- 

 dued and exterminated in favor of economic forms. Human 

 labor can then be economized and concentrated on the desir- 

 able and desired plants. Two blades of grass will then truly 

 grow where one grows now. 



But in this connection intensive cultivation brings several 

 rewards. It reduces — on the law of struggle for existence^ 

 the crop of weeds; it assures a succession and rotation of crops; 

 it keeps the soil active and fermenting; it engages, exercises, 

 and evolves the brain of man. 



Once more want of knowledge, lack of moral and religious 

 aim, relative absence of sympathetic and social spirit, cause 

 poor and improvident methods of soil cultivation. So the 

 farmer who indulges in loose living, who cultivates carelessly, 

 who fails to secure best seed, who buys in a dear market, and 

 who does not make sympathetic contact with his neighbors, 

 becomes the unsuccessful one. When we le^rn that in one 

 state of the Union an average return of sixty-seven bushels 

 per acre of sweet potatoes is secured, as against one hundred 

 and thirteen per acre in a state that is less favored in its soil 

 and climate, or that fifty bushels of wheat per acre are yielded 

 by land in Scotland, as against ten bushels in Russia, a subject 

 for future consideration and improvement at once is before us. 



One of the most sad, widespread, and wasteful conditions 

 now confronting civilized man is the disposal of city, town, 



