230 Thoughts on Requisites of Farming. [May, 



Who needs mental training, if he does not who labors amid 

 arrangements the most complicated, and agencies the most subtle 

 and refined, and whose only hope rests on the proper guidance of 

 the one, and the appropriate action of the other? It is true, these 

 arrangements and agencies will bring about happy results, al- 

 though not understood and controlled, provided we do not, in our 

 ignorance, nullify their effects. But how much more subservient 

 to our interests and happiness would they become, were we to 

 make ourselves their intelligent masters, and guide them at our 

 will. To study these arrangements, and search out the laws that 

 guide these agencies, is the appropriate business of the farmer. 

 And where is there a field of more rich and varied interest? As 

 he scatters the inanimate seed in the earth, and traces the varied 

 changes to life and beauty; as he contemplates the mysterious 

 energy that will soon be acting within its bosom, and producing 

 results that mock human contrivance and skill, an energy at once 

 most powerful and mild, giving forth products that the chemist 

 cannot imitate or produce, and working by an apparatus the most 

 exquisitely delicate and fine, how must his imagination be aroused, 

 and ascend to the Source of light and life, the great cause of 

 these mysterious agencies, put in requisition to administer to our 

 daily happiness and wants? How must his admiration be excited, 

 when he sees the sunbeams weaving a texture, in fineness and 

 perfection as far exceeding the finest fabrics of human art, as they 

 do the coarsest canvass that form the sails of a ship, or the bags 

 for cotton? And who but has felt it, can tell the pleasure to be 

 derived by the varied hues of the opening flower, when he has seen 

 the skill that has managed their production and composition? It 

 is not so much the exhibition that strikes the eye of the most 

 careless observer, that arrests his attention, as the agency by 

 which these eflfccts are produced. He draws his pleasure from a 

 deeper source, closed but to laborious industry. 



All admire the result produced by the action of any compli- 

 cated engine; but how much more does he admire, and how much 

 deeper is his joy, who, by proper education as an engineer, reads 

 the design in the adjustment of every wheel, and beholds the in- 

 genuity that produced every varied motion. The same difference 

 in the joys conveyed by the eye of intelligence and ignorance, in 

 viewing any production of nature. One sees a pretty flower, the 

 other the skill and workmanship of a God. To disclose her real 

 beauties. Nature need be interrogated. True, she often hangs out an 

 alluring sign, to arrest even the attention of the careless and idle, 

 and bestows blessings on the ignorant and ungrateful; but to her 

 votaries only does she raise the veil that covers her hidden mys- 

 teries and choicest treasures. The former may daily wander amid 

 the most magnificent exhibitions of her matchless skill, and see 



