16 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 



water, her instinct teaching her that they will thus be drowned. 

 Taking advantage of this instinct, the Doctor plants his plum-trees 

 on the bank of a stream or pond, and gives the trunks such an 

 inclination that all their branches overhang the water. Thus the 

 desolater is checkmated by his own instinct, and the fruit pre- 

 served from his ravages. I know nothing cleverer in its way 

 than this device. 



Now I suppose there is no contemner of ' Book-farming ' so 

 mulish or so dull that he would not, after hearing of this device, 

 take advantage of any brook or pond he might have on his 

 premises, and set his plum-trees where they will be safe from 

 the Curculio. But suppose the discovery had been made by some 

 fruit-grower of the last century, and duly recorded in a book ; 

 had since been subjected to a thousand ordeals, and had passed 

 triumphant through them all would it have been less acceptable 

 or less valuable than it now is 1 If it be worth our while to learn 

 at all, what difference can be imagined between the knowledge 

 founded on a neighbor's experience and that contained in a book? 

 If there be any, are not the odds altogether in favor of that pre- 

 scription which has undergone the wider scrutiny and been sub- 

 jected to the more rigorous criticism ? 



And here let me speak of another, who more recently shook 

 off the dust of our City's pavements to spend the later half of his 

 life on a farm. I allude to Professor JAMES J. MAPES, whose 

 fame as an Agriculturist must have reached very many among 

 you. It cannot be many years it seems to me but five or six 

 since Professor Mapes, who was extensively engaged in Sugar- 

 Refining and had heavy dealings in Sugar came to a dead halt, 

 or rather a dead smash. Stripped of means and of credit, he felt 

 too old to launch again on the dangerous sea of Commerce, whose 

 waves had so lately and so deeply engulphed him ; so he hired a 

 bit of land in New Jersey, removed his family thither, and resolved 

 to turn the chemical and other scientific knowledge which had so 

 little availed him as a Sugar-Refiner, to account in the novel 

 vocation of a farmer. He was very destitute, and of course got 

 on but slowly at first ; and when he first undertook to lecture in 



