24:2 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



wind blow across their fields and over their hill-tops. 

 It neither thrashes nor grinds their grain ; it has 

 ceased even to separate it from the chaff. The brook 

 brawls and foams idly adown the precipice or hill- 

 side : the farmer grinds his grain, churns his cream, 

 and turns his grindstone, just as though falling water 

 did not embody power. He draws his Logs to one 

 mill, and his Wheat, Corn, or Rye to another, and 

 returns in due season with his boards or his meal ; 

 but the lesson which the mill so plainly teaches re- 

 mains by him unread. Where running or leaping 

 water is not, there brisk breezes and fiercer gales are 

 apt to be. But the average farmer ignores the 

 mechanical use of stream and breeze alike, taxing 

 his own muscle to achieve that which the blind forces 

 of Nature stand ready to do at his command. It may 

 not, and I think it will not, be always thus. 



Steam, as a cheap source of practically limitless 

 power, is hardly a century old ; yet it has already re- 

 volutionized the mechanical and manufacturing in- 

 dustry of Christendom. It weaves the far greater 

 part of all the Textile Fabrics that clothe and shelter 

 and beautify the human family. It fashions every 

 bar and every rail of Iron or of Steel ; it impels the 

 machinery of nearly every manufactory of wares or 

 of implements ; and it is very rapidly supplanting 

 wind in the propulsion of vessels on the high seas, 

 as it has already done on rivers and on most inland 

 waters. 



Water is, however, still employed as a power in 



