the teeming population of an older world, success will lie in the 

 more thorough knowledge of the laws which govern and the el- 

 ements which feed all vegetable growth. 



It is not to be implied from this that the farmer is to be what 

 the world denominates a man of science. Perhaps he has more 

 real science now than he might see his way clear to admit, as 

 Moliere's man had all his life been talking prose without so un- 

 derstanding it. Perhaps he will remain to the end the plain and 

 simple man of experience and practice. But what it is right to 

 expect from the farmer, if he shall not remain a hopeless con- 

 servative, as the stand-still East yet scratches its fields with the 

 wooden plough of two thousand years ago, is mental hospitality. 

 By this I mean a willingness to learn what may profit his own 

 vocation, at the hands of those who explore with analysis or mi- 

 croscope the laws of the universe in which his lot is cast. It is 

 a shame that an unfair suspicion of science has been awakened 

 in his mind by the impostures and knaveries of designing men. 

 His gains are too hardly won from the acres to which his toil is 

 given to lie at the mercy of the charlatans who invade the coun- 

 try with specifics or patents, too loudly heralded and impudently 

 pushed to be worth the purchase. Science, half-understood and 

 crudely applied by men who are ambitious for riches at the farm- 

 er's expense, may well excite his indignation and scorn. His in- 

 heritance of common-sense is not for nothing here. Yet the 

 same principle will tell him that all truth must have its practical 

 application. What was a scientific toy thirty years ago, to-day 

 records in instant signals the markets of the distant West or 

 England upon which hang the prices of his crop. What was 

 counted a madman's dream in Elizabeth's time, now urges the 

 steamer, deep with grain or flour, across the Atlantic waves. The 

 intimate knowledge of a single cereal or tuber or root may sup- 

 ply to him the key to an improved subsistence and a brighter 

 home. The plea is then for an intelligent hospitality of mind, 



