AND FARMING PRODUCE. 303 



lawns, parks, pleasure grounds, and forests — and 

 not to arable fields ; and tall fences, ■with their 

 fine-spreading trees, though charming and pic- 

 turesque in landscape, are fitter for employing 

 the pens and pencils of poets and painters, and 

 attracting the eyes of travellers and tourists, than 

 for profiting the population of the country. Want 

 of light, and of a free circulation of air, is likewise 

 the reason why crops of grain, when lodged by 

 falls of rain, and a too rank vegetation, are always 

 inferior in quality of produce ; because fructifi- 

 cation has been checked, and maturation never 

 completed. 



Two special objects are provided for by the 

 natural maturation of grain and seeds ; the one 

 is an adequate supply of material to serve as food 

 for the embryonic germ to draw upon when it 

 developes itself; and the other, furnishing to 

 the grain and seed such protection against the 

 influence of conditions under which they may be 

 placed, as will prevent them from perishing, or 

 being unseasonably called into vital action. And 

 herein the purposes of nature and the advantages 

 of mankind are quite different. Man wants grain 

 only to supply him with a suitable portion of the 

 aliment which nature has stored up within it for 



