5 



around him. For him the sunlight builds its golden bridge to 

 earth, for him the subtle elements of the soil are shaken from 

 their combinations in the rock. For him the clouds are gath- 

 ered and the dews distil. Among these powers, from the frosts 

 of March to the stiffening ground of November, he has to guide 

 the growth of what he cultivates. He is almost invisible among 

 these vast natural forces like the steersman on a steamer's deck; 

 yet it is the part of his skill to coi trol them all. 



I called the farmer a harvester of force. His chief ally is 

 vegetable life. This life he scatters dormant in the seed, itself 

 the concentration of a culture which has gone before. A seed, 

 like a grain of corn or vv^heat, is a wonder to the thoughtful mind. 

 It is the cradle of a plant whose first leaves, wrapped around its 

 tiny form, are charged with nourishment for its first growth. 

 Buried in the ground, and starting with ambitious haste for an 

 existence in the light, it becomes Nature's darling ; for sun and 

 showers, heat and electric thrills, the universal ministries, become 

 its servants. They will all give of their wealth, all' will be rep- 

 resented in the gram whose fulness makes the Autumn glad. 



It is not too much to say that the history of a single spike of 

 corn or wheat-ear involves as much profound and patient science 

 before it can be fully told as the physical history of a man. So 

 numerous and complicated are the forces and their relations, so 

 curious is their modification by what we call the principle of life, 

 that the comparison is fair. What is as yet understood is but a 

 splinter from the tree. The Physiology of Plants is a great sci- 

 ence and widening like a rushing tide, but its mysteries outnum- 

 ber its revelations. How to renew or prepare soils has been a 

 subject for the profound and numberless experiments of Chem- 

 istry, but Nature, the best chemist, works as yet with locked 

 doors. The weather like the wind bloweth where it listeth, in spite 

 of all human attempts to compel its secrets. Still it seems plain 

 that in the future, among the keener agricultural competitions or 



