THE FARMER. 87 



a first-rate farm, and the farm will make a first-rate man of you, 

 as to your intellect and as far as in you lies. Mind geared on 

 to matter, brains mixed with the soil, thought coupled with 

 labor — that makes a farm, and also a man ; and a class of men 

 fit to rule a nation, and give tone and elevation to the politics 

 of the world. 



And beyond the mere theory and practice of farming, any 

 country town, though secluded, and without any rich institu- 

 tions in it, or any celebrity about it, is as good a university as 

 ever was endowed by God or man, for training willing minds 

 to power and vitality, and imparting to them the truths of 

 science, and the facts and inspirations of nature. 



Any one of the retired and quiet agricultural towns of this 

 county — Dover, Wrentham, Needham — is a part of God's 

 glorious universe, and displays as much of his creative power 

 and providential care, as any other part. Nature unfolds her 

 wise and beautiful mysteries there as amply as anywhere. And 

 there are eyes there capable of seeing them, and brains to 

 search them out, and souls to admire and grow up to them. 

 Needham has as large an outdoors to it, and over it, as any 

 other place of its size on either continent. What more would 

 you have ? Look ! All the astronomy that Newton or Lever- 

 rier ever knew, or that such as they, the giants of science, ever 

 will know, is rolling and shining over your heads there every 

 night. The whole charming science of botany lies there spread 

 out in the flowers and grasses that adorn your hills, and 

 meadows, and woods, and moving on in their wondrous pro- 

 cesses of germination, and growth, and maturing. There are 

 trees in the town, and the young man who should make a 

 thorough study of a single one of them, and understand it, all 

 it can teach, its whole physiology, how it grows, the laws of it, 

 the mysteries of it — know all — would be deemed a learned 

 man in any scientific convention that ever assembled. There 

 is all geology there under your feet, open to your inspection, 

 ready to carry you back in knowledge to the flood, and beyond 

 it, and to show you all the secrets and marvels of creation that 

 the Lyells and Bucklands have ever written about. In your 

 fields, and forests, and waters, and the air, there is a chance for 

 the patient and intelligent observer to learn so much of animal 

 life in its various structures and habits that he shall feel per- 



