PREFACE. vii 



breeder — his model farms — his extended draining 

 schemes — his repeated implement trials and stock 

 •exhibitions evidence. A formal fillip even the Em- 

 peror of the Celestials gives annually to agriculture, 

 by taking a plough in his imperial hand and cutting 

 a farrow with ceremonious solemnity : just as a 

 neighbouring " nob " in England turns the first sod 

 of his county railway. " In Japan," we are informed 

 by Captain Osborne, " agriculture is the most honour- 

 able of pursuits, for did not the great conqueror 

 remark, ' that it is the tillers of the ground that by 

 their labours fill my kingdom with abundance.' " 



At a discount it is but in a few places, as amidst a 

 seafaring population — such as that interesting Sylt 

 people of whom some notice has appeared lately, 

 where the farm duties are attended to by the women: 

 the landsmen being regarded as an inferior order of 

 beings. They have the excuse that the waves are 

 continually trenching upon their soil, notwithstand- 

 ing the patient industry with which the poor creatures 

 plant a mesh-work of protective clinging grasses along 

 the sand-hills during the bleak autumn evenings as 

 they keep an anxious look-out for the return from 

 the treacherous deep of brother, lover, husband. To 

 learn what agriculture did for Europe in the seventh 

 century, started by the monks of St. Benedict, I refer 

 my readers to the eloquent pages of White's Eighteen 

 •Christian Centuries. The exquisite beauty of the 

 picture there drawn with such elaborate skill I would 

 not mar by compression. A sentence only or two I 



