PREFACE. 



This is a book on the sources of agriculture. Some there 

 may be who, deeply immersed in the technicalities of modern 

 agricultural theory and practice, have forgotten what the 

 sources are ; but they are very plain. Food and shelter and 

 clothing are obtained now, in the main, as in the days of the 

 patriarchs. Few materials of livelihood have been either 

 added or eliminated. The same great groups of animals 

 furnish us flesh and milk and wool; the same plant groups 

 furnish us cereals, fruits and roots, cordage and fibres and 

 staves. The beasts browsed and bred and played, the 

 plants sprang up and flowered and fruited, then as now. We 

 have destroyed many to make room for a chosen few. We 

 have selected the best of these, and by tillage and care of them 

 we have enlarged their product and greatly increased our 

 sustenance, but we have not changed the nature or the 

 sources of it. To see, as well as we may, what these things 

 were like as they came to us from the hand of nature is the 

 chief object of this course. 



A series of studies for the entire year is offered in the 

 following pages. Each deals with a different phase of the 

 life of the farm. In order to make each one pedagogically 

 practical, a definite program of work is outlined. In order 

 to insure that the student shall have something to show for 

 his time, a definite form of record is suggested for each 

 practical exercise. In order to encourage spontaneity, a 

 number of individual exercises are included which the student 

 may pursue independently. The studies here offered are 

 those that have proved most useful, or that are most typical, 

 or that best illustrate field-work methods. There may be 

 enough work in some of them for more than a single field trip : 



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