6 



ble roots were still entirely unknown in England. And in 1681 we 

 find the first notice of turnips being fed to sheep ; and it would seem 

 that they were not then pulled, but sown with clover and left for the 

 sheep to dig out the meat of the root, leaving nothing but the rind 

 in the ground. It was contended that the turnips thus scooped out 

 were the means of fertilizing the soil by being filled with dew and 

 rain water, " corrupted by the nitre of the air" and thus " when 

 they burst " enriched the field. Or the turnips were ploughed in 

 like clover for manure, being yet hardly used for human food. Thus 

 probably all the edible productions of the farm were taken in then- 

 wild estate, and by degrees, by patient culture, were brought to their 

 present state. This kind of progress and development is still going 

 on, of which we have familiar illustrations. The tomato has thus 

 been taken from a wild state within a very short time, and made an 

 important article of food on the tables of the rich and poor. 



Thus the farmer has to do with this wonderful law of ,develop- 

 ment in nature, and progress is the main fact in this world. But 

 progress in the earth's productiveness makes no advance without the 

 aid of man. This is a God-made world as well ; and the man-made 

 world is its civilization, and the farm is the foundation of the latter. 

 Progress would be a hackneyed subject were it ever finished. But 

 what seems sometimes a finishing stroke is but an impulse that 

 brings forth something new, so that when we get to the end, a broad- 

 er opening expands on the right and left, compelling us to take sides 

 against Solomon and deny the truth of his aphorism that " there is 

 nothing new under the sun." Startled at the coming into our heav- 

 ens of a new star beyond the sun, we may not be surprised at the 

 finding of many new things this side the sun. To suppose other- 

 wise is as though the Creator could not put into this insignificant 

 microcosm — this little world-pocket, millions more than man can ever 

 find out or dream of. And yet so great is the progress that the 

 thought seems an absurdity or something that demands more proof 

 than an assertion, that many of us have seen this whole modern de- 

 velopment, this whole modern progress. Although my life to me 

 seems but a span, a dream, yet it spans the most marvelous record 

 of human improvement and progress of any period of seventy years 

 in the history of man. My life began just within the outer circle of 

 modern progress. The revolution of '76, and the French revolution 

 had given the old world an immense impulse in thought and activi- 

 ties. And when men think, and think earnestly and honestly, im- 

 provement and progress must be the results. The 17th century had 



