ADVANTAGES OF RURAL PURSUITS. 51 



drops of glittering dow. " Mark here," says Professor John- 

 ston, to whom I am indebted for the material of this illustra- 

 tion, " a beautiful adaptation. Different substances are 

 endowed with the property of radiating their heat, and of thus 

 becoming cool with different degrees of rapidity, and those 

 substances which in the air become cool first, also attract first 

 and most abundantly the particles of falling dew. Thus in the 

 cool of the evening the grass-plot is wet while the gravel-walk 

 is dry, and the thirsty pasture and every green leaf are drink- 

 ing in the descending moisture, while the naked land and the 

 barren highway are still unconscious of its fall." 



I shall have occasion, in a moment, to observe how the 

 practice of deep and subsoil ploughing proceeds upon and 

 takes for granted this agency of water in the production and 

 growth of vegetable life. 



To subdue the earth and to replenish it ; in this first com- 

 mandment lies the epitome of our art. 



To subdue the earth and to replenish it is to fit it for the 

 abode of cultivated, developed man. 



In redeeming the bog meadow of which I spoke, what has 

 the farmer accomplished ? If prudently done, at times of 

 relief from other work, he has added greatly to the value of his 

 estate. He has given beauty, softness and finish to the land- 

 scape. Every traveller that passes that way has cause to bless 

 him. He has sweetened the air, made his own and his neigh- 

 bor's abode healthier, and given a ruddier tint to the rose upon 

 his daughter's cheek. He has increased the capacity of the 

 earth for the very end for which it was made. That portion 

 which was before worse than useless, now affords means of 

 sustenance and support for a human being. 



Look at the same thing on a larger scale. In 1780 the 

 island of Great Britain contained about nine millions of inhab- 

 itants. In seventy years the population doubled, and the 

 quantity of food raised upon the island was more tlian doubled. 

 It is estimated that under the improved systems of agriculture, 

 the food necessary to sustain forty millions of beings may be 

 raised on this little speck of the ocean. We can understand 

 this when we find that on the estate of Mr. Coke, (afterwards 

 Earl of Leicester,) the rental has increased eight-fold in fifty 

 years— from £5,000 to £40,000. 



