THE ESSENTIALS OF 

 AGRICULTURE 



CHAPTER I 



THE NEW AGRICULTURE 



Here is a land where no bulls, breathing fire from their nostrils, have 

 plowed the soil ; where no enormous dragons' teeth were ever sown ; where 

 no human harvest started up, bristling with helmets and crowded lances ; but 

 teeming corn and the wine god's Massic juice have made it their own ; its 

 tenants are bursting crops and luxuriant herds of cattle. Hence comes the 

 war horse that prances proudly into the battlefield. Hence the white flocks 

 upon a thousand hills. Think, too, of stately cities and trophies of human toil 

 and towns piled by man's hand with great rivers flowing beneath their honored 

 walls. It is a land, too, which has disclosed streams of metal mantling in its 

 veins, a land that has produced mortal tribes of heroic mold. Hail to thee, 

 mighty mother of noble fruits and noble men ! VERGIL 



1. Modern agriculture. Lord Bacon, a noted English phi- 

 losopher, was at one time much interested in agriculture. He 

 collected and read carefully many books on the subject. When 

 he had finished reading the books, he ordered his servant to take 

 them into the garden and burn them, because they dealt with 

 the art or practices of agriculture and contained no principles. 



In modern agriculture, art and science are combined. As 

 an art, agriculture is complex and involves a study of the best 

 practices connected with the field, the orchard, the garden, 

 the barn, the feed-yard, and the dairy. But to understand the 



