35 



fields, and regenerate your daily operations. Hence, I 

 say, what you want is, by the help of the School, some 

 systematic means of pushing every improvement out into 

 the mass that have not yet arisen to come in search of it. 



If you will allow me to ask questions. Are there no 

 tokens to be found among you, that some of the primary 

 maxims of the improved husbandry are as completely 

 disregarded as the bulletins of the Chinese rebellion ■? 

 Are there no fields lying in Norfolk, this fall, whose 

 dwarfish crops proclaim as dismally as language could, 

 that it has not yet been found out by their owners that 

 potatoes and turnips crave potash, that clover and peas 

 want lime, that wheat and oats hunger for silex and phos- 

 phoric acid, just as voraciously as the Irishman in the 

 kitchen wants the potatoes, horses the clover, or children 

 late home from school the wheat 1 



Are there not certain triangular stains smirching the 

 sides of barns under the stable- windows, left there by man- 

 ure-heaps that took all weathers with no roof, which tell 

 every passer-by that these prodigal feeders, though they 

 locked the barn doors every night, and set traps for foxes, 

 and sent constables after the thief that stole their apples, 

 forgot that the atmosphere has a sly way of turning 

 robber, as well as giver, — that the sun and rain filch as 

 as well as fertilize, — and so did not shelter nor fasten down, 

 by boards and muck and forest leaves and plaster, those 

 volatile salts and gases which these noiseless marauders 

 were snatching up into the sky, — so much gold out of their' 

 pockets 1 You would hardly applaud the thrift of a man- 

 ufacturer that throws away a quarter of his raw material. 



Are there no specimens of stock, in the yards and pas- 

 tures of these towns, rawboned and diseased, and lean as 

 the leanest kine of Pharaoh, — walking illustrations of 

 the " anatomy of melancholy," — which seem to show that 

 the problem in their keeping has been reduction to the 



